The Last Word on Cocktails

Even for a whiskey nut like me, it's hard to drink whiskey neat when the mercury is hovering near the triple digits. It's times like this that I turn to cocktails, usually whiskey cocktails, but not always.

The Last Word is a prohibition era cocktail that, as with many prohibition era cocktails, has been recently rediscovered. It was brought back by the Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle and apparently remains somewhat of a staple up there.

I didn't have any Chartreuse, an herbal spirit made by French monks, but it is a common ingredient so I decided to pick some up. It's a bit pricy but thankfully is available in 375 ml bottles, which will likely last you a long time given that it tends to be doled out by the half or quarter ounce in cocktails.

The Last Word is an alluringly easy recipe calling for equal parts gin, maraschino liqueur, green Chartreuse and lime juice (I used a half ounce of each), shaken with ice and strained into a martini glass.

It's a lovely drink and very refreshing, equally sweet, sour and spicy, the perfect thing to sip on one of our sweltering LA afternoons.