The Last Word
Gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino and lime in equal measure. Nothing else.
At a Glance
Story
Equal parts is the whole architecture. The drink came out of the Detroit Athletic Club around Prohibition, sat forgotten in Ted Saucier's 1951 book Bottoms Up, then got pulled back into the world by a Seattle bartender named Murray Stenson in the mid 2000s. Green Chartreuse is the reason it works and the reason it costs you. Carthusian monks have made it since 1737 from 130 herbs on a recipe nobody outside the order has, and since 2023 they have capped production to stay a monastery rather than a factory, so the bottle is genuinely scarce.
Ingredients
- ¾ oz gin
- ¾ oz green Chartreuse
- ¾ oz maraschino liqueurLuxardo is the standard
- ¾ oz fresh lime juice
- a brandied cherryto garnish
Method
Four ingredients, all the same amount, and the result tastes nothing like any of them. Fair warning on the shopping. Green Chartreuse and Luxardo maraschino will cost you the better part of a hundred dollars between them, and both sit at the back of the shelf for months. Buy them anyway. The Chartreuse alone earns its keep, and maraschino is the secret half of half the classics you already drink.
- Chill a coupe in the freezer while you gather everything.
- Measure all four into a shaker over ice. Resist improving the ratio. Equal parts is not laziness, it is the point, and every one of the four is loud enough to bully the others if you let it.
- Shake hard for 15 seconds, until the tin is painful to hold.
- Double-strain up into the cold coupe. It should land a cloudy pale green, the colour of something faintly medicinal, which it very nearly is.
- Drop the cherry in. A proper brandied one, not the radioactive sort.
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