Last Word — tasting notes & food pairings

Last Word

The Last Word is a gin sour built in equal parts from four ingredients — gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and freshly squeezed lime juice — shaken hard with ice and strained ice-cold into a stemmed cocktail glass. It is a pale, herbal, chartreuse-green drink, sharply tart and deeply aromatic, with the spice of Chartreuse and the cherry-stone fragrance of maraschino playing against lime. Born at the Detroit Athletic Club around the time of the First World War, it vanished for decades after Prohibition and was famously revived by a Seattle bartender in the early 2000s, becoming one of the signature rediscovered classics of the modern cocktail revival.

Crisp & tart27% ABV

A pale, cloudy chartreuse-green shaken sour of roughly 25 to 30 percent alcohol, sharply tart and intensely aromatic. The green Chartreuse leads with a complex herbal, spicy, faintly minty botanical character, the maraschino adds a funky, nutty cherry-pit sweetness, fresh lime keeps the whole thing bright and dry, and the gin's juniper threads underneath. Built in even quarters, it finishes long, herbal and balanced rather than sweet — far more harmonious than its forceful ingredients suggest.