Green Swizzle

Green Swizzle is a traditional Caribbean drink made famous in P. G. Wodehouse’s 1925 short story “The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy,” in which, after a lifesaving encounter with the drink at the British Empire Exhibition, Bertie Wooster promises that should he eventually have a son, “Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down in the register.” The drink was long believed to be fictional, but the modern availability of newspaper databases has revealed that it was not only real but for a time quite popular, at least in its native region, and has even turned up a handful of recipes. Although these differ in detail, they agree that the essential ingredients were gin or rum, Falernum (or, in Trinidad, the Angostura company’s equivalent, Carypton), wormwood bitters (a simple infusion of wormwood and strong rum), and ice. See falernum. The pool of other ingredients included lime juice, sugar, Angostura bitters, and soda water.

There were two competing bastions of Green Swizzling: the Bridgetown Club, in Barbados, the drink’s probable place of origin, and the Queen’s Park Hotel, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. As far as can be determined, it was invented around 1900. The original Green Swizzle’s star seems to have faded by the late 1920s, although a Falernum-less Green Swizzle incorporating green crème de menthe popped up at the Floridita bar in Havana at the end of the next decade and was passed around for a time. It is one of the few drinks that Constante Ribalaigua did not improve. Properly made, the original Green Swizzle is a complex, refreshing, and intriguing drink, and one well worth reviving.

See also swizzle.

Recipe: Fill a tall glass half full with shaved ice, 60 ml good white rum or gin, 30 ml Falernum, and 5 ml wormwood bitters. Twirl a swizzle stick rapidly until the ice is melted and the drink is almost a frappe. Add a straw. Optional adjuncts: 22 ml lime juice, 30 ml soda water, and 8 dashes of Angostura bitters added as a float.

“A Note on West Indian Drinks.” Times from London, May 24, 1910, 37.

Bridgetown Club [pseudonym]. “Green Swizzle Formula.” New York Herald, October 19, 1907, 8.

Schoff, Wilfred H. “Cinderellas of the Caribbean.” Los Angeles Times January 8, 1917.

“Sure of the Swizzle.” New York Herald Magazine, August 19, 1908, 2.

By: Darcy O’Neill and David Wondrich