Death in the Afternoon
Absinthe topped with ice-cold Champagne — a stark two-ingredient drink credited to Ernest Hemingway.
- Difficulty
- medium
- Prep time
- 3 min
- Strength
- 17.3% ABV
- Glassware
- Champagne flute
- Base
- liqueur led
- Serves
- 1
Method
- Pour the absinthe into a chilled champagne flute.
- Top slowly with ice-cold Champagne, pouring a little at a time.
- Watch the drink turn cloudy (louche) as the two combine — this is normal and part of the drink's character.
- Serve immediately, unstirred.
Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Jigger
Household swap: A tablespoon measure (1 tbsp ≈ 15ml)
Corkscrew
Household swap: Champagne's wired cork can usually be twisted out by hand without a corkscrew.
Missing an ingredient?
Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.
Instead of Absinthe
Absinthe is the drink — there are only two ingredients, and one of them is the point. A milder anise liqueur such as pastis makes a gentler, lower-strength version that is pleasant enough, but it loses the herbal complexity and the louche that give this drink its name. Nothing in a normal cupboard gets close.
Make it better
- Pour the Champagne in slowly and in stages; adding it all at once causes it to foam over given how reactive absinthe is with the carbonation.
- Use a genuine, good-quality absinthe rather than a cheap imitation — the drink has nowhere to hide a harsh, poorly made spirit.
- This drink is stronger than it looks: absinthe is typically 55–75% ABV, so treat the measure with real respect.
Rescue this drink
- Foams over when pouring
- Pour the Champagne in smaller increments, pausing between pours to let the foam settle.
- Tastes too strong or harsh
- Use less absinthe next time — 10ml rather than 15ml — and top with a little more Champagne.
- Loses its fizz fast
- Make this drink to order, one glass at a time, from a freshly opened, well-chilled bottle.
- Flat or lost its fizzgeneral guidance
- Top with a fresh carbonated mixer just before serving. Carbonation can't be restored by shaking or stirring once it's gone — build it in at the last step.
- Too weak or waterygeneral guidance
- Add a splash more of the base spirit rather than extra mixer. For stirred or built drinks, over-dilution from ice is the usual cause — try a shorter stir or fewer, larger ice cubes.
- Too sweetgeneral guidance
- Add a small amount of fresh citrus juice or a dash of bitters to bring the balance back — adjust gradually and taste as you go.
- Served too warmgeneral guidance
- Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the base days ahead and add champagne, well chilled when you pour.
- Champagne, well chilled:
- Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.
What it tastes like
The taste, and what drives it
dry, soft, very light, sparkling — a long and lengthened drink served long, over ice.
Dry
Dry → Sweet
Barely sweetened. The spirit and the acid are what you taste.
What drives it: Champagne, well chilled — carries the most sugar into the glass.
Faintly bitter
Gentle → Bitter
A bitter edge you would only notice if you looked for it.
What drives it: Absinthe — provides the bitterness.
Very light
Light → Rich
Almost weightless in the mouth — closer to a long soft drink than to a sipper.
What drives it: Champagne, well chilled — adds most of the weight.
Very sparkling
Still → Sparkling
Carbonated, which lifts the aromatics and makes the drink taste drier than its sugar content alone would suggest.
What drives it: Champagne, well chilled — carries the carbonation.
Very bold
Delicate → Bold
Very bold — concentrated, and served small for that reason.
What drives it: Absinthe — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.
What you smell first
- Orchard fruitLeads
From Champagne, well chilled
- Anise
From Absinthe
Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.
How it was worked out
Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.
How balance actually works →If it isn't right
What goes wrong with this drink, and why
Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.
The fizz is the last thing in, and the first thing lost
Worth knowingCarbonation escapes to warmth, agitation and anything it can cling to — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass wall.
How to handle it: Chill the mixer hard, pour it against the inside of the glass, add it last, and stir once at most.
It's too strong
- Likely cause
- Absinthe dominates by design here — this is a drink built to be sipped, and it is under-diluted more often than it is over-poured.
- What to change
- Building in the glass for longer, or add a measured 5–10ml of water. Both are the same correction; one is just more honest about it.
- What that does
- Alcohol heat drops and the aromatics open up — a slightly diluted spirit-forward drink usually smells better, not worse.
It's gone flat
- Likely cause
- Champagne, well chilled loses gas to warmth, to agitation and to anything it can nucleate against — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass.
- What to change
- Chill the mixer properly, add it last, pour it against the inside wall of the glass, and stir once at most.
- What that does
- The bubbles last, which also makes the drink taste drier — carbonation contributes a real acidity of its own on top of the lift.
It doesn't smell of anything
- Likely cause
- This drink's aroma comes from orchard fruit and anise, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
- What to change
- Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
- What that does
- More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.
It tastes one-dimensional
- Likely cause
- With 2 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a long and lengthened drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
- What to change
- Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
- What that does
- More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.
Taste profile
- Sweetness
- 1/5
- Sourness
- 0/5
- Bitterness
- 1/5
- Strength
- 4/5
- Fruitiness
- 0/5
- Freshness
- 3/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate onlyAbsinthe proof varies widely by brand (roughly 55–75% ABV), which shifts the total alcohol noticeably.- Calories
- 125 kcal
- Sugar
- 2 g
- Carbohydrates
- 3 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 2.6
- US standard drinks
- 1.46
- ABV
- 17.3%
- Serving size
- 150 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~143 kcal from alcohol, ~0 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 94–156 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Assumes absinthe at 65% ABV and Champagne at 12% ABV.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Milder Version
Reduce the absinthe to 10ml and use a dry, less assertive sparkling wine for an easier-drinking take on the original.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A built build: a long and lengthened liqueur-led-based drink, served long, over ice — sparkling in the mouth.
Long and lengthened
A short measure stretched with a mixer or juice — the drink's length, not its concentration, is the point of it.
Base
Absinthe
Lengthener
Champagne, well chilled
Technique
built
Components are poured into the serving glass over ice and stirred once, or not at all. Dilution happens while you drink rather than before.
The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.
What it ruins: Nothing, but it cannot properly combine anything viscous — a syrup poured last will sit at the bottom.
Everything about building in the glass →How the technique works →Dilution
In the glass, as you drink
Water from ice typically makes up around 15% of the finished drink for a built build (commonly 10–20%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.
Why dilution is an ingredient →Served
Long, over ice
Champagne flute · 150ml
Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.
Texture and aroma
Carbonation lifts aromatics and adds a slight acidity of its own, which is why a long drink can taste drier than its sugar content suggests.
No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.
Where to go from here
Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.
Where it comes from
Origin and family
Origin of the Death in the Afternoon
American, created by Ernest Hemingway and published in the 1935 anthology 'So Well It Wins' (later reprinted as 'Death in the Afternoon: A Cocktail Companion'), named after his own 1932 bullfighting book of the same name.
Hemingway contributed the recipe under his own name to a published 1935 anthology, which makes this one of very few cocktails whose authorship is documented in print by its author.
On drinks history
Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.
History and culture →Try this next
Martini
You may like this because it shares a strong-forward profile with the Death in the Afternoon, but uses gin instead of liqueur-led.
Gibson
You may like this because it shares a strong-forward profile with the Death in the Afternoon, but uses gin instead of liqueur-led.
Vesper
You may like this because it shares a strong-forward profile with the Death in the Afternoon, but uses gin instead of liqueur-led.
Use up your ingredients
Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.
Related tools
Scale this for a party
Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.
Recipe confidence
Hemingway's own written recipe is well documented, though exact ratios of absinthe to Champagne vary between sources.