The Dregs of the Bar

Nothing lasts. Everything fades. It’s all just a matter of time. Honestly, I take comfort in the fact that eventually the sun will engulf the Earth and leave nothing more than cinders and ashes floating in the cosmic dust. That might not be exactly how it works, but you get the idea.

On a much smaller scale, I should have learned this lesson a long time ago. If you have something that’s delicious, enjoy it. Drink life to the lees. Don’t save it like some kind of miser, looking for the perfect occasion to savor a precious drop. A while back I had the McKenzie rye change on me, leaving behind its haunting haybarn aromas in exchange for a much less charming vegetal profile.

Just this week I took down the most precious bottle from my bar, the last remaining ounces of Harvest Spirit’s Core Vodka Batch #21. The bottle wasn’t a planned purchase, but when I tasted the batch while at the distillery to buy the first run of Cornelius Applejack, I couldn’t resist. It was delicious with top notes of caramel and butterscotch. Crazy stuff. And it seemed to be some accident of fate that the distillers were never again quite able to recreate.

But I found that over years in my liquor cabinet its intensity had diminished. There weren’t any off flavors, yet still it was a mere shadow of its former self. Luckily, not all of the bottles are old and precious. Still, as we are packing and getting rid of things, we’re trying to drink through the bar, and that led to an exciting discovery.

Okay, I did buy a small bottle of green chartreuse shortly after we moved to the region. But this is one of the very few liqueurs that people say will actually age and improve in the bottle.

Well, believe it or not there were still a couple of last lovely ounces of the deeply herbal and complex stuff. I was also looking to make a dent in the bottle of Luxardo maraschino I recently bought. A bottle of that stuff lasts forever, even if you regularly use it to plump up the tart dried cherries from Trader Joe’s.

Anyway, I was looking around at cocktail recipes and was floored when I came across one for The Last Word. On paper it sounds absolutely vile, but it was just what I was looking for to clean out my liquor cabinet.

¾ ounce of gin
¾ ounce of green chartreuse
¾ ounce of maraschino
¾ ounce of lime juice

All ingredients are combined and shaken over ice. Then it’s poured into a chilled glass.

Here’s what’s wrong with the drink. There’s too little gin in it, and too much of everything else. Most drinks that use maraschino call for it by the drop, or by the teaspoon. The better part of an ounce of maraschino promises a drink that’s far too sticky and sweet to be enjoyable. Green chartreuse too is a bold flavor with an aggressive herbaceousness that can easily overwhelm anything that it touches. And all that lime juice? That’s madness! This drink will be so tart as to be undrinkable.

Amazingly, the reasonable assertions above all are wrong.

With all of those big bold flavors battling it out in the glass, they almost miraculously all achieve an unexpected harmony. The lime keeps the sweetness of the maraschino and chartreuse in check. And the gin adds complexity without taking away from the marvelous juxtaposition of nutty, herbal, and tart.

Seriously, when we return to Albany, I may need to buy another bottle of green chartreuse just to make this cocktail.

The big challenge is going to be draining all the white spirits without buying another bottle of bourbon. Mrs. Fussy enjoys Manhattans and that’s about it. But I’m going to need some help if I’m going to make it through the summer bar without her help. That includes tequila and rum. And she’s up for that task, but less enthusiastic about the unaged whiskey I’ve managed to stockpile.

Luckily, those are all things that I enjoy. So with a bit of planning, we may just make it through this bar after all.