Category: Cocktail/mixed
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Pulque
I remember clearly the moment I reached page 376 of my first reading of Against the Day. I’d already been moonlighting as Drunk Pynchon here for a few years, just with a big “Coming Soon” sign plastered in place of the AtD list (or actually, it originally said “coming less soon”; I was pretty intimidated…
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Piña Colada
It’s January 1956; it’s Chapter One of V.; Benny Profane’s back in New York, up early yo-yoing sub-pavement between Grand Central and Times Square. He meets a group of Puerto Rican kids called Tolito, José, and Cucarachito (Klook to his friends). Their sister Josefina shows up too and shortly decides that Profane should move in…
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Grapefruit Margarita
A cocktail from Inherent Vice brought us what is by far the most read post on this site: the tequila zombie. I’m not sure exactly why that one pulls in the hits so much more effectively than anything else around here. It certainly isn’t the wildest or most iconic drink we’ve tackled (see banana breakfast,…
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Peach Brandy Milk Punch
Milk wouldn’t seem to be the most common booze component (let alone the most promising), but we do have a minor history with it here at drunk pynchon dot com. We first got lactic live on air with the Pynchon in Public podcast back in 2015—Chris took the vodka with milk, while Bo and I…
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Fortified Wine Spritzer
Partly on the wise urging of a reader here, I reread Vineland a month or so ago. My original go at it however many years ago was a bit juvenile. Gravity’s Rainbow was my first Pynchon, and this followed hot on its contrails. Predictably, I was craving paranoid pyrotechnics and wild world-historic tangents and wound…
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Sloe Gin Fizz
In the last part of the last pre-epilogue chapter of V., Fausto Maijstral walks into Profane’s lodging-house in Malta, looking for Stencil. He’s gone though, and Maijstral can’t even find a drink. Profane’s drank everything in the house, and now lies “snoring and drooling and apparently enjoying himself,” (p. 452). Maijstral wakes him up and…
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Chablis Punch
In the innocent days of late 2019, I ordered a box of wines of Pynchonian pedigree. We’ve since knocked off the Constantia, the Pouilly Fuisse, the Tignanello, and the Zeltinger. But the bottle of Chablis has had to bide its time. It was destined to become punch, and opportunities to break out the punch bowl…
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151 and Pineapple Juice
Last week, we made burgers. Hailing as I do from the great state of Queensland, it was imperative I get a slice of tinned pineapple in there. Later in the week, another few slices made their way on top of a curry. Both applications were thoroughly delicious. (We will avoid the fraught question of pizza.)…
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Jägermeister and 151
Happy Pynchon in Public Day! Alas I must most shamefully confess to having read no Pynchon in public today. As penance, I will now drink one shot of Jägermeister and 151 and tell you about it on the semi-public of this weblog. Chapter 20 of Bleeding Edge finds our heroine Maxine snooping for Eric Outfield…
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Sazerac
Against the Day serving up another favourite! Ever since as a somewhat pretentious teenager I decided it should be thus, I’ve esteemed the Sazerac above all other cocktails. It’s a boozy contemplator, rye whiskey lifted and complicated with some sugar, Peychaud’s bitters and hint of absinthe. A slightly weirder, more gothic Old Fashioned. Pynchon’s Sazerac…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 