The “Everybody’s Irish” Cocktail

It’s the inevitable green drink post for St. Patrick’s Day! Well, ok, that was yesterday, but that’s when I made the drink. This one is of course very well known, right? You all remember this drink…this is the drink everyone drinks on St. Patrick’s Day. Any bar you go to, people are downing this thing left and right…

Oh, wait. They’re not.

Maybe there’s a good reason for that. This comes once again from the Savoy Cocktail Book and is described as very popular on March 17th. So I suppose it was popular at one time. That time has passed.

The Recipe (as given in the Savoy)

3 dashes green mint

6 dashes green Chartreuse

Irish whiskey

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass; add a green olive

Hmm…that’s a little vague. I assumed the “green mint” meant green creme de menthe. With no quantity given on the whiskey, I went with 2 1/2 ounces, mostly because my wife said she’d had a very long day. Otherwise I probably would have used two ounces. It wouldn’t have mattered.

 

See the olive in there? Craddock says that in this drink, it looks like a gibbous moon suspended in liquid. Poetic license a bit, I think.

I suppose the creme de menthe is in there for color; green Chartreuse is on its own not quite that green. And while there’s not much of the mint flavor, there’s enough to antagonize the Chartreuse, which is a powerful and fickle substance. Even more than absinthe, Chartreuse tends to dominate a cocktail, and that certainly holds true here. Its bitter, herbal overtones can be a very enriching ingredient but in this case they do not sit nicely alongside the whiskey. Not a particularly good drink at all. Two livers. Maybe next year try one of these cocktails instead.