The Last Word

Throughout my late 20s, my go-to drink at any bar was a rum and diet coke with lime. There’s nothing wrong with that drink—it’s refreshing, it has a little bit of tartness courtesy of the lime, and you pretty much know what you’re going to get each and every time you order it. But after a while – a decade!—it starts to get a little old. My problem was that I never knew what else to order. All of that changed in 2009 when a new bar called Anvil opened up down the street from our rental house in Montrose.

The glories of Anvil are familiar to most Houstonian cocktail enthusiasts, and have been written up repeatedly, so I don’t need to rehash them here. But what I do want to mention is their list of 100 classic cocktails to try. Who doesn’t love a good list? (Spoiler alert – I do!) It’s a fabulous list of drinks, divided up into seven descriptive categories including: “sour & short,” “herbal & spirituous,” “boozy & alluring,” “light & long,” “bitter and bold,” tropical & tiki” and “odds & ends.” It was a virtual roadmap of what to order, depending upon your mood, and provided a launching point for me and my husband to begin experimenting with cocktails at home.

I couldn’t tell you what my first drink from that list was – my memory is not that good. But I’ll leave you with a recipe for one of my favorites, the Last Word. It’s a sweet and tart drink with a natural green tint due to the inclusion of green Chartreuse (an herbal liqueur developed by Carthusian monks). Created by a bartender at the Detroit Athletic Club in 1915, just before prohibition began, the Last Word fell out of favor after World War II, before it was revived by a Seattle bartender in the early 2000s. If you want to give it a try, combine equal parts (3/4 ounce) gin, green Chartreuse, fresh lime juice, and maraschino liqueur in a shaker filled with ice, shake, and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a brandied cherry, and enjoy.