19) The Foo

2 oz. Maker's Mark
.5 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
Three dashes Regan's Orange Bitters #6
Green Chartreuse

Rinse a cocktail glass with the Chartruse and set aside. Shake the rest of the ingredients with ice and strain into the cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

I promised a friend of mine that I would make a tasty cocktail to celebrate her birthday. The only requirement was that it should have Maker's as the base spirit as that is her booze of choice. So as I was on my way to Elixir I was thinking Ok, so - Maker's Mark, aaaaaaannnnd? Pretty much all that was swirling in my mind Manhattan and Old Fashioned, two drinks that have, you know, already been done. My next step was think of things I like to use these days. Of course the first thing I thought of was St. Germain. After mentally punching myself in the crotch for even letting that thought creep into my head the radiant glow of Luxardo overtook me.

I realized that I wasn't aware of any cocktails that used Luxardo that had Whiskey as a base (of course that's because I'm just an ignorant hick) so felt somewhat confident that we would have at least a good experiment on our hands. I had recently had an Aviation in which the glass had been rinsed with Green Chartreuse and absolutely loved it, and thought that doing the same would add a nice kick of herbaciousness to the drink. I knew bitters were going to be in there cause I love me some bitters. At first I had thought that peach bitters would be a nice touch, but it turned out that the bar was out of those. Fortunately Ed came to the rescue by suggesting orange bitters which turned out to be a nice, subtle boost to the Maraschino.

When I got to the bar and told Ed what I wanted to use for the drink he promptly asked me in what proportions. "I don't know," I said "that's your job. I'm just drinking this here beer!" Fortunately I've got a great me wrangler who puts up with me just spitting out ingredients and making them actually work. The drink was quite good, with the Maker's well tempered by the Luxardo and given an excellent backbone from the rinse of Chartreuse. Not a bad birthday drink if I do say so myself.

Comments always welcome, or if you prefer the e-mail fire away at drinkaweek [at] gmail [dot] com.