As my friends know, I like to have a drink of the season. Something that captures my mood and complements the climate. Maybe even that uses seasonal ingredients. A drink for which I can have the ingredients on hand for company or for myself.

Well, after my trip to B Side, the drink of spring for me is the Last Word. Its fruity-dry balance, its pale green color, its perfect alchemy that needs no garnish: I can’t think of a better spring cocktail. It was popular among my friends too, who couldn’t remember the cocktail name so kept calling it the L Word.

It’s not in most guidebooks, even the encyclopedic Trader Vic’s. Thankfully, Paul at Cocktail Chronicles comes to the rescue. I urge you to go read his post for the history of this long-forgotten Prohibition-era drink (that’s half the fun), but for convenience I’ll reproduce the recipe:

The Last Word

1/2 jigger dry gin
1/2 jigger maraschino liqueur
1/2 jigger green Chartreuse
1/2 jigger fresh lime juice

Put ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake well. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

I only see a couple of drawbacks. First, some people don’t like Chartreuse. I love the stuff myself and have a hard time keeping a bottle around, I like it on the rocks so much. But to some, the herbal flavors will remind them of a Ricola cough drop. To them, I’ll just say that in the Last Word, the interplay holds everything in balance; like a Long Island Ice Tea, you don’t so much taste the individual liquors, as the sum is greater than the parts.

Then there’s the ingredients: maraschino liqueur isn’t too cheap and can be a pain to find; and Chartreuse is expensive, often topping forty dollars a bottle, though Martignetti’s currently stocks it for 34 bucks. If you’re unsure about committing to the liquor, or are leery of odd-tasting liqueurs, go try a Last Word at B-Side for a test run. I predict that many of you, even the gin-haters, will fall in love with this one.