One of the Applewood Team's favourite cocktails for many good reasons. First: it's got Gin. Second: Super well balanced and therefore a pretty easy to remember recipe. Thirdly: It's plenty boozy for us for Friday Knock-offs. 4 Ingredients in near equal parts: Gin, Chartreuse, Luxardo and Lime. A delicious quintuplet for a cornerstone of modern cocktails with a popularity that has ebbed and flowed for a century.
The Original Last Word cocktail has links going back even prior to the cocktail revolution that occurred during Prohibition. The first known serving of the Last Word was at the Detroit Athletic Club in 1915, created by a man known as Frank 'The Dublin Minstrel' Fogarty, a vaudevillian comic turned bartender. As the Prohibition era began, the cocktails popularity rose and by the 1950's, it had been recorded by Ted Saucier in his cocktail tomé Bottoms Up! - a wonderful documentation of cocktails from the prohibition era and beyond.
In the years following, the cocktails popularity began to wane and was sadly somewhat forgotten, until the turn of the 21st century when it was added to the list at Seattle haunt The Zig Zag Cafe by Murray Stenson in 2004, following with the opening of the iconic Pegu Club in New York, where the Last Word took place on its list, where the renaissance truly begun.
It's definitely a cocktail that still sneaks under the radar of the wider public - most of those in the know have been introduced to it by their bartender with a love for the drink. When you know, it's a great cocktail to have in your repertoire, and to make sure your house is well stocked with Chartreuse, Luxardo and - of course - Gin. Traditional garnish is a maraschino cherry, but to keep things just that little more Applewood, we've opted for a dried Quandong.
the last word
30ml Applewood Gin
20ml Green Chartreuse
20ml Luxardo
20ml Lime Juice
Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake and double strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with either a maraschino cherry or a dried quandong
