16) Green Machine

1.5 oz. Damrak Gin
.5 Cointreau
.5 oz. Green Chartreuse

Add all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice. Shake for 30 seconds and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime twist.

Ed and I came up with this one for a Damrak competition that was being held in town last week (he ended up not being able to make it). I have been playing around with Chartreuse a lot lately as I'm finding it a rather fascinating ingredient so I was pretty keen to see if we couldn't match the Gin with that. In our first attempt we use .5 oz of lime just instead of the Cointreau. Ed and I had the same reaction upon the first sip - There was a lot going on there. Unfortunately it also seemed as though the lime juice was a bit too much (though I'm beginning to think my palate has started rebelling against citrus for some reason).

Ed and I thought replacing it with Cointreau would provide a bit of brightness to help pull together the Gin and Chartreuse. What a difference that made. The flavor profile changed dramatically with the Chartreuse coming way up front but smoothed out by both the Gin and the Cointreau.

We were pretty happy with how it turned out, though one which we will probably revisit in the near future to see if we can't tweak it just a wee bit. For people not too fond of anise flavors it may not be the best drink to win them over with, though the original recipe might do the trick. Probably with a little less lime.

If you try this out let us know what you think, or if you give it a tweak leave us a comment or send us one of those e-mail deals to drinkaweek [at] gmail [dot] com will ya?