I'm pretty sure someone asked me every single day over the last week if I'm “going to the RN74 party tonight.” Yes, the Michael Mina machine has been firing on all cylinders in the week leading up to the launch of its full service, hosting private.
| IBA official cocktail | |
|---|---|
| Type | Cocktail |
| Primary alcohol by volume | |
| Served | Straight up; without ice |
| Standard drinkware | Cocktail glass |
| IBA specified ingredients |
|
| Preparation | Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. |
The Last Word is a gin-based prohibition-era cocktail originally developed at the Detroit Athletic Club. While the drink eventually fell out of favor, it enjoyed a renewed popularity after being rediscovered by the bartender Murray Stenson in 2004 during his tenure at the Zig Zag Café and becoming a cult hit in the Seattle area.
- View the profiles of people named Murray W Stenson. Join Facebook to connect with Murray W Stenson and others you may know. Facebook gives people the.
- Seattle's own Murray Stenson was named 'Best Bartender in America' at the recent Tales of the Cocktail festival in New Orleans. Murray is a bartender at the Zig Zag Cafe.
Original recipe and variations[edit]
The Last Word consists of equal amounts of gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and freshly pressed lime juice, which are combined in a shaker with ice. After shaking, the mix is poured through a cocktail strainer (sieve) into the glass so that the cocktail contains no ice and is served 'straight up'.[1]
The cocktail has a pale greenish color, primarily due to the Chartreuse. Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Bar in New York City considers it one of her bar's best cocktails and describes its taste as follows:
I love the sharp, pungent drinks, and this has a good bite. It's a great palate cleanser. And it's perfectly balanced: A little sour, a little sweet, a little pungent.
The taste may also vary slightly depending on the brand of gin being used. The original cocktail at the Detroit Athletic Club during the prohibition era used bathtub gin, and even today the club is using its own recreation of 'prohibition era bathtub gin' (vodka, spices, herbs, citrus) for it.[3] Some variations of the cocktail have sprung up, which usually replace the gin with another base liquor and sometimes switch the limes for lemons. A particularly well-known variation is the Final Ward, created by the New York bartender Phil Ward, who replaced the gin with rye whiskey and the lime juice with lemon juice.[2]
History[edit]
The first publication in which the Last Word appeared was Ted Saucier's 1951 cocktail book Bottoms Up!. In it, Saucier states that the cocktail was first served around 30 years earlier at the Detroit Athletic Club and later introduced in New York by Frank Fogarty.[2][3][4] Since this dates the creation of the drink to the first years of the prohibition (1919-1933), it is usually considered a prohibition era drink. A research in the archives of the Detroit Athletic Club by John Frizell revealed later that the drink was slightly older predating the prohibition era by a few years. It was already offered on the club's 1916 menu for a price of 35 cents (about $8.22 in 2019 currency) making it the club's most expensive cocktail at the time.[5]
Fogarty himself was no bartender but one of the best known vaudevillian monologists (roughly comparable to today's stand-up comedians) of his time. Some assume that this occupation gave rise to the cocktail's name. Nicknamed the 'Dublin minstrel' Fogarty often opened his performance with a song and ended it with a serious heartthrob recitation. In 1912 he won the New York Morning Telegraph contest for the best vaudeville artist and in 1914 he was elected president of The White Rats (vaudeville actors union).[3][6][7] Around the time the cocktail was presumably created, Fogarty performed at the Temple theater in Detroit.[5]
The cocktail however fell into oblivion sometime after World War II until it was rediscovered by Murray Stenson in 2004. Stenson was looking for a new cocktail for the Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle, when he came across an old 1952 copy of Saucier's book. Soon after being offered at the Zig Zag Cafe it became somewhat of cult hit in the Seattle and Portland areas and spread to cocktail bars in major cities worldwide. It also spawned several variations with The Final Ward probably being the best known among them.[2][3][6] In addition its recipe reappeared in newer cocktail guides including the 2009 edition of the Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide.[1]
On May 20, 2011 Rachel Maddow demonstrated the preparation of the cocktail in her show on MSNBC and called it the 'last word for the end of the world'. This was meant as an ironic comment on the rapture and end of world prediction of the Christian radio host Harold Camping and in reference to the MSBNC news program The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, which covered Camping's predictions extensively.[8][9]
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ abAnthony Giglio, Ben Fink: Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide. John Wiley and Sons, ISBN978-0-470-39065-8, p. 80
A. J. Rathbun: Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz: A Cocktail Lover's Guide to Mixing Drinks Using New and Classic Liqueurs. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011, ISBN978-1-55832-771-9 , p. 137
Mardee Haidin Regan: The Bartender's Best Friend: A Complete Guide to Cocktails, Martinis, and Mixed Drinks. Wiley 2010, ISBN978-0-470-44718-5, p.211 - ^ abcdTan Vinh: The Last Word, a cocktail reborn in Seattle, is on everyone's lips. Seattle Times, 11. März 2009
- ^ abcdKara Newmann: The Spirited Traveller: Having the last word in Detroit. Reuters Africa, 2011-9-8
- ^Paul Clarke: The Last Word. The Cocktail Cronicles, 13 April 2006
- ^ abSam Dangremond: How Three Classic Cocktails Got Their Names. Town & Country, 2015-07-20
- ^ abA. J. Rathbun: Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz: A Cocktail Lover's Guide to Mixing Drinks Using New and Classic Liqueurs. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011, ISBN978-1-55832-771-9 , p. 137 (online copy, p. 137, at Google Books)
- ^Brett Page: Writing for Vaudeville. Echo Library 2007 (Reprint), ISBN978-1-4068-2313-4, p. 32 (online copy, p. 32, at Google Books)
- ^Kase Wickman: Maddow celebrates the Rapture with Last Word cocktail at rawstory.com 2011-05-21 (contains the video clip The Last Word Rapture cocktail of Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, 2011-05-20
- ^Jack Mirkinson: Rapture 2011: Maddow Makes A May 21 Cocktail (VIDEO) . Huffington Post, 2011-5-21
Further reading[edit]
- Ted Saucier: Bottoms Up!: With Illustrations by Twelve of America's Most Distinguished Artists. Greystone Press, New York, 1951. (Reprint Martino, Eastford, CT, 2011, ISBN978-1-891396-65-6.)
- Neal McLennan: 'Barfly: The Last Word'. Vancouver Magazine, 2011-11-1.
November 14th, 2009
Nips – 11/14/09
Finally, last night, I met Seattle legend and internationally renowned bartender Murray Stenson. What a treat. As I’ve said here before, I’m one of many people nationwide who have encountered Murray’s hospitality from afar, by way of a surprise, complimentary drink delivered by a mutual bartending acquaintance. (I first heard about Murray from one of our city’s best bartenders, Scott Holliday, and was flattered to learn that Murray has been a drinkboston reader from early on.)
Murray Stenson Best Bartender In America
Acting as ambassador of the Murray Stenson Fan Club, New England Chapter, I presented him with a book on the history of Boston signed by several of our city’s bartenders — most of whom, like me, have only admired him from afar — plus a bottle of Chartreuse milk punch from the staff at Drink. Murray opened the punch right then and there and poured several shots for patrons at the bar. Then he mixed a few rounds of strong, elegant drinks — doling out some rare treats like the above — for me and my companions, West Coast drink writers Paul Clarke and Charles Munat. I’ll tell you more about Murray and my Seattle bar-hop in a later post.
» Save the date for drinkboston’s next event: Barstool Mountain Monday: Country Drinking Songs and Country Drinks, November 30 at the Independent in Union Square, Somerville. Think southern-style cocktails, shots of bourbon and Lone Star beer flowing to a soundtrack of classic country drinking songs spun by Brother “Taco Brim” Cleve. There’ll be well-known faves like “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Made a Loser Out of Me),” but also lesser-known gems like “Four on the Floor (and a Fifth Under the Seat),” and “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles).” More details to come soon.
» Also this month, swing by the bar at Clio between the 16th and 22nd, when bartender/mixologist Todd Maul celebrates the birthdays of David Embury and William “Cocktail” Boothby. Embury, born in 1886, is the author of the biblical Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Boothby, born in 1862, was perhaps the best-known bartender just before Prohibition. Download spss 20 for mac. He plied his trade most notably at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and authored World’s Drinks And How To Mix Them and The American Bartender.
“We will be serving the Boothby Cocktail, the Casino and two creations from the Clio bartenders. For 10 bucks you get a drink and some rock shrimp,” says Todd, who provided the recipe for his homage to Embury and Boothby below.
Todd Cocktail
2 oz Rittenhouse 100 rye whiskey
1 oz Aperol
1 oz Dolin sweet vermouth
Dash Angostura bitters
Murray Stenson Bartender Seattle
Stir over ice, serve straight up.
Murray Stenson Seattle
Tags: Clio, drinking songs, Murray Stenson, Todd Maul, ZigZag Cafe
Posted in Bartenders, Cocktails, Events, Nips, Seattle | 3 Comments »