How to make ...
The Last Word
This bartender favourite is one of those strangely perfect combinations of complex herbal notes, fresh citrus and the delicate sweetness of a classic liqueur, without any syrup or sugar.
Ingredients
25ml Gin
25ml Green Chartreuse
25ml Maraschino
25ml Lime Juice
Maraschino Cherry to garnish
Times:
Prep: 2 Minutes
Make: 30 Seconds
Total: 2 Minutes and 30 Seconds
Calories:
185 calories
Allergens:
No common allergens to be found, although, since every body is different, we advise you check out this recipe's ingredients list just to be sure!
Servings:
Serves 1
Method
Chill a martini glass/coupette in the freezer or fill it with ice.
Take your Boston glass or small tin and, using your jigger to measure, add the gin, Chartreuse, and maraschino liqueur to the shaker.
Using your Mexican elbow and a jigger to measure, squeeze 25ml of lime juice and add it to the shaker.
Fill your shaker with cubed ice and seal using your Boston tin or lid, before shaking vigrously for 10-12 seconds, or until your tin is very cold.
Remove your glass from the freezer, or empty of ice if necessary.
Using your Hawthorne strainer and your fine strainer, double strain the cocktail into your chilled martini glass or coupette.
Garnish with a cocktail cherry, serve and enjoy!
Equipment
Shaker
Jigger/Measure
Mexican Elbow
Hawthorne Strainer
Fine Strainer
Cubed Ice
History
The Last Word is generally agreed to have been created sometime during the prohibition at the Detroit Athletic Club’s bar. The first written instance of the cocktail is in Ted Saucier’s 1951 book Bottoms Up! In the book, Saucier recounts that the drink was created around 30 years before at the Athletic Club and that it grew in popularity, eventually spreading to New York, thanks to its popularity with a successful vaudeville performer named Frank Fogarty.
Sadly, some time after WWII the Last Word fell into obscurity, being lost to a whole generation of drinkers and mixologists until, in 2004, bartender Murray Stenson of the Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle, was searching through an old copy of Bottoms Up! for new drinks to serve at his bar. Setnson stumbled across the Last Word and it immediately caught his eye. He began serving it at the Zig Zig and it soon became a cult hit at bars around the Pacific Northwest, before making its way around the world.
Though pretty much all bartenders, drinkers and cocktail publications agree that the recipe for a Last Word contains equal parts of all its ingredients, somewhat bafflingly, the Difford’s Guide recipe, ups the gin and lowers all the rest to give a 3:2:2:2 ratio and for some strange reason includes a splash of chilled mineral water.
We don’t condone adding water to any cocktail unless its soda and it’s going on top, best stick to the original recipe for this one.
