Last Word

The Last Word is a gin cocktail built from equal parts gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice. Its striking balance — herbal, tart, sweet, and sharp — helped make it one of the most recognizable drinks of the modern cocktail revival. The drink is generally traced to Detroit’s Detroit Athletic Club in the years around the First World War, often dated to about 1916. A menu in the DAC features the cocktail’s name in the summer of that year, although no description is attached. Its early history is hazy, though: the exact creator and circumstances are uncertain. A popular story links it to Frank Fogarty, a celebrated vaudeville performer known as the “Dublin Minstrel,” who was appearing in Detroit around that period. However, Fogarty was known to frequent the DAC a few months after the 1916 menu, indicating that he likely did not create the cocktail, although he might have popularized it. One firm landmark came decades later. The Last Word appeared in Ted Saucier’s 1951 cocktail book "Bottoms Up", which helped preserve the recipe after its early heyday.

For years afterward, it remained little known outside cocktail-history circles. The drink’s second life began in Seattle in the early 2000s. Bartender Murray Stenson encountered the recipe in "Bottoms Up" and put it on the menu at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle. Word spread among bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts, and the Last Word became a touchstone of the craft-cocktail revival. Its return showed how a forgotten recipe could find a new audience generations after its likely Detroit beginnings. It inspired many subsequent variations including The Paper Plane and Final Ward.