Name: First Word
Total time: 4 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 37.5 ml Gin; 22.5 ml Maraschino liqueur; 22.5 ml Dry vermouth; 22.5 ml Lime juice; 15 ml Orange-red aperitivo

First Word
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Photographed in a Retro Coupe Engraved 7.75oz

Ingredients:
1 ¹⁄₄ oz	Hayman's London Dry Gin
³⁄₄ oz	Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
³⁄₄ oz	Strucchi Dry Vermouth
³⁄₄ oz	Lime juice (freshly squeezed)
¹⁄₂ oz	Bittersweet orange-red aperitivo

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

How to make:

Select and pre-chill a Coupe glass.
Prepare garnish of lime zest twist and Luxardo Maraschino Cherry.
SHAKE all ingredients with ice.
FINE STRAIN into chilled glass.
Express lime zest twist over cocktail and discard.
Garnish with skewered cherry.

Allergens:

Recipe contains the following allergens:

Dry vermouth - Sulphur Dioxide/Sulphites

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

More cocktails with similar strength and taste profile

Review:

Bittersweet and gin-laced, this is one of the first Last Word riffs to emerge from the Chartreuse shortage in 2022.

View readers' comments

Variant:

20 best Last Word variations

History:

Adapted from a recipe by Scarecrow1779 discovered on Reddit.com.
See: Last Word history

Nutrition:

One serving of First Word contains 199 calories

Alcohol content:

1.5 standard drinks
17.37% alc./vol. (17.37° proof)
20.8 grams of pure alcohol

Difford’s Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.

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Juan Hatton

21st February at 20:56

No apertivo, subbed with 10ml Campari.
Changed dry for blanco to up the sweetness. I liked it, on my have again list.

Aidan O’Shea

6th January at 00:45

Dialed back the Luxardo, and wish I’d dialed it back a bit more.

Peter McCarthy

4th May 2024 at 01:05

Made this with Beefeater, Luxardo Maraschino, Dolin Dry, & Aperol. Very tasty! I got notes from the gin, spice/flavor of the maraschino liqueur, sweetness and herbal notes from the vermouth, orange-bitter from the Aperol, and of course lime. All well-balanced for my palate! Disappeared quickly. Definitely going to the top of my favorites.

Yorey C

28th February 2024 at 05:53

Gordon's | Gallo ... tastes odd. smells like citrus, doesn't taste like it.

Yorey C

28th February 2024 at 06:00

made a bacardi special and it tastes weird in the same way, maybe i got bad limes or something

1 reply

Sebastian C

8th January 2024 at 02:59

To see whether it would work from a flavour comparability perspective, we experimented by using Empress Elderflower Rose Gin and were happy with the outcome.

Sebastian C

8th January 2024 at 03:15

When we (there were two of us) compared against the original recipe, the original is truer to the taste profile of a Last Word. There’s a subtle, but notable, difference with the gin we used (a bit more layered and interesting, flavour-wise). When the votes were tallied, the Empress variation came out victorious.

Florian Ruf

14th December 2023 at 15:31

This version is good, but IMHO it lacks body. Any suggestions out there to improve this?

Rémi Dejaeghère

12th January 2024 at 20:39

I personally improved texture on my shaken cocktails by using one big rock and 2/3 ice cubes for the shake (cf Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold, of course).

Avery Garnett

29th May 2023 at 17:10

It's...alright. It's nice. It tastes a lot closer to a last word than I expected but it's in a weird place that it's not as good as a last word (for a tangy, complex gin/chartreuse/herbal cocktail) and it's not as good as a paper plane (for a tangy, complex aperol/fruity/bittersweet cocktail).

Colin R

1st July 2023 at 01:37

Spot on. I thought about playing with the proportions or swapping ingredients but why bother when those alternatives exist.

That said, it does only require common ingredients so if you don’t have a bottle of nonino or charteuse handy (the latter always a challenge these days) it’s a reasonable alternative.

William Westbrook

1st May 2023 at 11:24

I learned about the shortage from The Wall Street Journal, which ran the Last Word recipe with it, just as it had done a dozen years earlier. I was able buy a bottle here for HK$498.

The Monks Who Make Chartreuse Don’t Care About Your Fancy Cocktails

Their decision to cap production to focus more on prayer has enthusiasts stockpiling bottles of the French liqueur

Peter Shaw

1st May 2023 at 06:14

Hadn't heard anything about a shortage down under - but still took some proactive action! A bottle of Yellow and Green on their way. Find it hard to imagine a satisfactory substitute for the real thing.

Rufus T. Firefly

29th April 2023 at 13:15

There's an Oregon-produced liqueur called "Ver" that is a closer match than Genepy. Slightly more licorice than Chartreuse, but as good a substitute as I've found.

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