Chartreuse & Tonic – Recipe

Chartreuse And Tonic
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Chartreuse & Tonic

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

294

kcal
ABV

13%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make the Chartreuse And Tonic.

Ingredients

  • 2 oz 2 Green Chartreuse

  • 6 oz 6 Tonic Water

Directions

  • Technique: Build In Glass
  • Combine all ingredients except for the tonic water in a glass.
  • Fill the glass with ice.
  • Stir to combine and chill the ingredients.
  • Gently add the tonic water and give the drink a couple of last stirs to mix it fully.

Featured Video

What Does The Chartreuse And Tonic Taste Like?

The Chartreuse and Tonic is excellent, and the strong sweet herbal flavors of the chartreuse blend perfectly with the slightly bitter citrus flavors of the tonic. This is a top-tier Chartreuse cocktail, in my opinion.

I don’t know where this cocktail came from or the earliest record. I feel it is a recently invented cocktail since It doesn’t seem to have a history. The first time I heard about this was from a manga I read a while back called “Bartender.” In chapter 26, one of the characters makes a Chartreuse and tonic, which was the first I had ever heard of this drink. If you google it today, you may find around ten posts about it, which isn’t many, but it shows that it is somewhat known. I’m at a dead end with this one, and that manga is the oldest (and only) printed reference to it I know of. If you know anything about the history of this cocktail, please send me an email, and I will look into it, and as I gather more information, I will update this. As a side note, the Bartender manga is excellent and fun to read. The anime sucked and removed everything that made the manga good, so avoid watching it, but it’s a fun read.

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Biter Cocktail – Recipe

Biter Cocktail
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Biter Cocktail

5 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: British
Servings

1

servings
Calories

241

kcal
ABV

34%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make the a Biter Cocktail.

Ingredients

  • 2 dashes 2 Absinthe

  • 1/3 oz 1/3 Lemon Juice

  • 1/3 oz 1/3 Simple Syrup

  • 2/3 oz 2/3 Green Chartreuse

  • 1.5 oz 1.5 Dry Gin

Directions

  • Technique: Saxe Soda Shake
  • Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker.
  • Add one medium or two small ice cubes to the cocktail shaker and shake until the ice fully melts.
  • Without a strainer, pour the chilled and aerated drink into a glass.

Notes

Featured Video

What Does The Biter Cocktail Taste Like?

The Biter cocktail is very similar to the Last Word, and if you like the last word, you will like this one too. The Biter is a bit more boozy, complex, and herbal than the Last Word, but they are very similar again. This is a tough one to describe. It’s herbal, slightly sweet, and a little sour. Don’t be fooled by its pretty color. It’s very strong and very herbal.

A Short History Of The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel In London.

In 1893, The American Bar at the Savoy hotel started serving American-style cocktails in London to the British upper class. The American Bar has always been a high-end bar but what set it on the map was when Harry Craddock became its head bartender in the 1920s. Harry Craddock was a British-born bartender who immigrated to the United States, eventually becoming a US citizen and head bartender of several high-end hotel bars. Still, Harry found himself out of work with the start of prohibition in 1920. He then immigrated back to England and became head bartender of the Savoy Hotel’s Bar. Harry transformed The American Bar from a high-end bar to one of the seminal cocktail bars of the 20th century. As the American prohibition was ending, the hotel realized it should record all of its most famous recipes and the innovations Harry brought to the bar. A year later, they published the Savoy Cocktail Book. Printed in 1934, the Savoy Cocktail Book documents the bar’s best recipes from the 1890s to the 1930s and stands as the pillar of prohibition-era European cocktail innovation. If Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide is the best cocktail book the 1800s gave us, then The Savoy Cocktail Book is the best cocktail book of the first half of the 1900s. I don’t think I will ever be able to drink there, though. A cocktail cost around $250 there, and they have one that’s almost $1000, and I’m not the Amazon guy, so good thing we have their recipe book.

Recipe Resources

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Improved Midori Sour – Recipe

Improved Midori Sour Cocktail
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Improved Midori Sour

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

252

kcal
ABV

28%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make the an Improved Midori Sour.

Ingredients

  • 2/3 oz 2/3 Lemon Juice

  • 1 oz 1 Midori

  • 1 tsp 1 Green Chartreuse

  • 2 oz 2 Vodka

Directions

  • Technique: Tiki Dirty Pour
  • Combine all ingredients into a shaker with crushed ice.
  • Vigorously shake for 10 seconds.
  • Dirty pour the whole shaker into a glass. Crushed ice and all.
  • Garnish:
  • Maraschino cherry

Notes

Featured Video

This isn’t a classic cocktail. It’s just a perfect cocktail. The Midori Sour is a pretty awful drink. If you google it, you’ll find many different recipes (also trying to improve it), but the official Beam Suntory recipe is half Midori and half sweet and sour mix. It comes in around 10% ABV and tastes as bad as it sounds. This late 70s drink reeks of sweaty polyester suits at studio 54 looking to fuck.

This improved one keeps the same flavor and intent as the original but isn’t as sweet, and the herbal flavors make it much more palatable.

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Last Word – Original Recipe & History

Last Word
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Quick Step-by-Step Last Word Recipe Video

Last Word

5 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

184

kcal
ABV

31%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a classic Last Word.

Ingredients

  • 2/3 oz 2/3 Lime Juice

  • 2/3 oz 2/3 Maraschino Liqueur

  • 2/3 oz 2/3 Green Chartreuse

  • 2/3 oz 2/3 Dry Gin

Directions

  • Technique: Saxe Soda Shake
  • Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker.
  • Add one medium or two small ice cubes to the cocktail shaker and shake until the ice fully melts.
  • Without a strainer, pour the chilled and aerated drink into a glass.

Recipe Video

Notes

The History Of The Last Word.

Invented at the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC) sometime before 1916, the last word survived thanks to a New York stage actor. The last word is often credited with having been invented by Frank Fogarty, but after research done by the DAC itself, the last word was invented sometime before Frank Fogarty brought it to New York. Frank Fogarty was a vaudeville actor in New York during the earlier part of the 20th century and is credited in Ted Saucier’s 1951 book “Bottom’s Up!” for having “introduced [The Last Word] around here [New York] about thirty years ago.” (Ted Saucier took over historical records and publications for The Waldorf-Astoria after Albert Stevens Crockett. A.S. Crockett is the person who compiled the original Waldorf-Astoria bars cocktail recipes into the famous Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book.) Due to the drink’s present-day popularity, the DAC researched and found an old 1916 decorative souvenir menu with the last word listed for 35 cents. The menu was most likely printed to celebrate the club’s much larger and more impressive new building on Madison Avenue in 1915. It is unknown if the last word predates the 1916 souvenir menu and, if so, by how much. The club first opened in 1887, so the drink was invented somewhere between those two years. The Detroit Metro Times has an excellent article about the Last Word it reprinted with the DAC permission that was first published in a 2015 edition of The Detroit Athletic Club Magainze.

The cocktail wasn’t commonly made again until 2003 when Seattle bartender Murray Stenson found a “Bottoms Up!” copy. He added this forgotten cocktail to his Seattle bar’s drink menu, and it was a hit. The Last Word became popular in the Pacific Northwest, eventually was made on television as the hot new Seattle cocktail, and soon spread to the rest of the country.

What Does The Last Word Taste Like?

I love the taste of this cocktail. The Last Word has a clean, bright herbal, cherry, citrus flavor that is wonderful but not for everyone. If you have ever had Green Chartreuse before and are not a fan, this cocktail will not change your mind. the Green Chartreuse flavor is not too strong, but it’s still the most forward flavor.

Most Important Ingredient.

The most essential ingredient in the Last Word cocktail is the gin. The dryness of the gin is what saves this cocktail from being way too flavorful and herbaceous. The drier and cleaner the gin is, the better. Don’t use a fancy flavorful sipping gin in this cocktail because the Green Chartreuse is already such a unique herbal flavor that any more strong herbal flavor is too much. The lime juice and Maraschino Liqueur help cut that flavor and add more complexity, but the clean dryness of the gin mellows the drink. I feel using vodka instead of gin makes for a more balanced cocktail, but the classic recipe calls for dry gin. Something like a Bombay dry gin (normal Bombay, not Sapphire) and Beefeater work very well in this.

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Champs Élysées – Original Recipe & History

Champs Élysées Cocktail
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Champs Élysées Cocktail

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: British
Servings

1

servings
Calories

202

kcal
ABV

32%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a classic Champs Élysées Cocktail.

Ingredients

  • 2 dashes 2 Angostura Bitters

  • 1/3 oz 1/3 Lemon Juice

  • 1/3 oz 1/3 Simple Syrup

  • 1/2 oz 1/2 Green Chartreuse

  • 1.5 oz 1.5 Brandy

Directions

  • Technique: Saxe Soda Shake
  • Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker.
  • Add one medium or two small ice cubes to the cocktail shaker and shake until the ice fully melts.
  • Without a strainer, pour the chilled and aerated drink into a glass.

Notes

Featured Video

The History Of The Champs Élysées Cocktail.

Champs Élysées is French for Elysian Fields and is named after the famous French avenue that terminates at the Arc de Triomphe. The earliest record of this cocktail comes from the 1925 book “Drinks Long and Short” by Nina Toye & A. H. Adair. I love this drink, and while I have never given that book more than a passing glance, this recipe is a standout hit from it. Most people will know this cocktail recipe from the later Savoy Cocktail Book printed in 1930. The Savoy Cocktail Book is regarded as one of the best European cocktail books to come out of the period, and it’s fitting that it includes this recipe. It is an example of how cocktails changed during the American prohibition era. Even though it was first printed in the 1925 book “Drinks long and short, ” the Savoy helped introduce Americans to cocktails made with less common liqueurs and aperitifs such as Chartreuse, which were more familiar with European cocktails.

What Does The Champs Élysées Taste Like?

The oaky wine flavor of the brandy is perfectly balanced by the herbal flavor of the Green Chartreuse, and the acidic citrus is cut perfectly by the syrup. It tastes like an herbal brandy sour, but its proportions make it balanced and tasty. If you have never had this, you don’t know what you are missing—one of the top 5 drinks I have ever had.

The Most Important Ingredient

The most essential ingredient in the Champs Élysées is the Green Chartreuse. Its unique green herb flavor shapes the drink. Any ordinary brandy will work, and in fact, I wouldn’t use a lovely sipping one. It would be a waste since the Chartreuse becomes the primary flavor. Fortunately, there is only one Green Chartreuse, so you can’t make this wrong since it’s a pretty short list of ingredients. Unfortunately, Green Chartreuse costs around $60 a bottle, making this a pretty pricy drink to make at home.

Who Were Nina Toye & A. H. Adair?

Nina Toye and A. H. Adair are very mysterious, considering they wrote a book with the first appearance of a few famous cocktails. Simple google searches bring up almost nothing, and even trying to thumb through some digital archives brings up very little. One source says that Nina Toye & A. H. Adair was a pseudonym for J. E. Plowman. I did locate a former WWI British officer named J. E. Plowman but nothing else on the name. The online source also says the book’s french translation “Petits Et Grands Verres” uses a different pseudonym of Philibert Le Huby, but I found that book still lists Nina Toye and A. H. Adair as the authors. Every reference I found to J. E. Plowman seems to be a copy-paste/scrape of the same information. Another lead brought me to American author Ann Huston Miller whose nickname was Nina, who eventually married English music critic and educator John Francis Toye. I could not find any books published under the name Ann Huston Miller, but I did find several other books under the name Nina Toye. A book in 1916 called “Death Rider,” A book in 1921 called “The Shadow of Fear,” and a book in 1935 called “The Twice Murdered Man.” A. H. Adair was a British food critic and food writer whose full name was Alec Henry Adair. So to me, it appears that an author and food critic without prior bartending experience but with a passion for cocktails came together to produce this one-off cocktail book.

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Bijou – Original Recipe & History

Bijou Cocktail
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Bijou

5 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

229

kcal
ABV

37%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a classic Bijou cocktail first printed in the 1900 edition of Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual. 

Ingredients

  • 2 dashes 2 Orange Bitters

  • 1 oz 1 Green Chartreuse

  • 1 oz 1 Sweet Vermouth

  • 1 oz 1 Dry Gin

Directions

  • Technique: Simple Stir
  • Combine all ingredients in the mixing glass.
  • Add ice to the mixing glass.
  • Stir the ingredients for 10 – 15 seconds. Try to avoid over-diluting the drink.
  • Strain into a glass.

Notes

Featured Video

The History Of The Bijou Cocktail.

This drink was invented by Harry Johnson and was first published in his 1900 edition of The Bartenders Manual. The name Bijou means jewel in French and is intended to represent the three spirits in this cocktail. The sweet vermouth represents a ruby, the chartreuse represents an emerald, and the dry gin represents a diamond. The original Harry Johnson recipe is stirred, but this cocktail can also be done pousse-café. A layered pousse-café Bijou looks very nice but doesn’t go down the easiest. I will say it’s magical to look at the side of a layered bijou and see the color of individual ingredients. If you layer this cocktail, the order to layer in is first:

  1. Sweet Vermouth
  2. Green Chartreuse
  3. Dry Gin

Layering order is pretty easy to figure out for most drinks. The sweetest item goes to the bottom, and the driest thing goes to the top. The sweet vermouth is the sweetest, so it goes on the bottom, followed by the Chartreuse, and obviously, dry gin is the driest of the three, so it goes at the top. Layering is usually determined by an ingredient’s gravity, which measures both sugar content and ABV/ABW. In practical application, though ABV is negligible, sugar content is the main contributor to gravity unless it’s 151 or some other crazy high ABV spirit. You can add grenadine to a tequila sunrise, and it drops to the bottom, but 151 will float on top of a zombie cocktail.

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