Last Word

Equal Parts

The equal parts cocktail is one of the most demanding formats in bartending because it offers nowhere to hide. In a drink where the ratios can be adjusted freely, a skilled bartender can correct an imbalance by adding more of one component or less of another. In an equal parts drink the ratios are fixed. All four ingredients are present in identical measures and the drink succeeds or fails entirely on whether those four ingredients are capable of coexisting at the same volume.

The Last Word passes that test with considerable room to spare. Gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice are four of the most assertive ingredients in the cocktail canon. Any one of them could dominate a lesser recipe. In the Last Word they hold each other in check, each one present, each one contributing, none of them leading at the expense of the others. That balance is the drink's defining achievement and it is more difficult to produce than it appears.

Detroit, 1915

The Last Word was created at the Detroit Athletic Club around 1915, which places its origin in the years immediately before Prohibition. It was attributed to Frank Fogarty, a vaudeville comedian who performed under the name the Dublin Minstrel and who apparently introduced the drink to the club during one of his visits. Ted Saucier documented it in his 1951 book Bottoms Up, which is the earliest known printed source for the recipe.

Between its creation and Saucier's documentation, Prohibition had come and gone and taken most of the pre-war cocktail culture with it. The Last Word did not survive in active circulation. It survived in print, in a single book, largely unread, until Seattle bartender Murray Stenson found it at the Zig Zag Café in the early 2000s and put it on the menu.

What followed is one of the more satisfying stories in modern cocktail history. A drink that had been dormant for half a century spread from a single bar in Seattle through the craft cocktail world within a few years. By the end of the 2000s it was being ordered on every continent. The recipe had not changed. The world had simply caught up with it.

Green Chartreuse

Green Chartreuse is produced by Carthusian monks at the Grande Chartreuse monastery near Grenoble using a recipe that dates to 1737. It contains 130 plants, flowers, and herbs. Only two monks know the complete formula. It is bottled at 55% ABV.

In the Last Word it appears at 22.5ml, the same measure as every other ingredient. At that proportion alongside lime juice and maraschino it is present and assertive without overwhelming. The herbal complexity it brings is the drink's dominant aromatic note and the characteristic that most people identify first when they try it for the first time. The sweetness it carries is balanced by the lime. The intensity it carries is balanced by the maraschino.

Green Chartreuse in the Last Word is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It is not a background ingredient. It is one of four equals.

Maraschino

Maraschino liqueur is made from Marasca cherries, a sour cherry variety grown primarily in Croatia, and their pits. The pits contribute a faint bitter almond note that is one of the liqueur's most distinctive characteristics. It is not the same as maraschino syrup, which is the sweet, artificially flavoured liquid found in jars of cocktail cherries. They share a name and nothing else.

Luxardo is the benchmark producer and the brand most associated with the drink. Their maraschino is drier and more complex than most alternatives, with the bitter almond note clearly present and a cherry character that is more sophisticated than it is sweet. Generic alternatives vary significantly in quality. In a drink where the maraschino is contributing one quarter of the total flavour, the quality of the bottle matters.

In the Last Word the maraschino is performing a bridging function. The green Chartreuse and the lime juice are both intense and both pulling the drink in different directions. The maraschino sits between them, providing sweetness that softens the lime's tartness and a complexity that complements the Chartreuse's herbal intensity without duplicating it.

The Lime

Fresh lime juice squeezed immediately before use. This is not optional and it is not negotiable. Lime juice oxidises and its flavour changes within twenty to thirty minutes of juicing. The brightness that fresh lime brings to the Last Word, the clean tartness that cuts through the sweetness of the Chartreuse and maraschino, is only present if the juice is fresh.

Bottled lime juice produces a flat, slightly bitter result that throws the balance of the drink significantly. In a cocktail where the ratios are fixed and every component is carrying an equal load, the quality of the lime juice is not a minor consideration. It is a quarter of the drink.

The Rediscovery

Murray Stenson's rediscovery of the Last Word at the Zig Zag Café is one of the origin stories of the modern craft cocktail movement. It demonstrated something that the movement has built itself around: that the best recipes do not always come from innovation. Sometimes they come from looking carefully at what already exists and recognising what has been overlooked.

The Last Word was overlooked for fifty years. It is not overlooked anymore. The drink that Frank Fogarty introduced to the Detroit Athletic Club in 1915 is now one of the most ordered classics in serious cocktail bars worldwide. It took a bartender in Seattle finding the right book at the right moment to bring it back. The recipe itself never needed anything. It just needed finding.