The Alaska Cocktail

, with gin and yellow Chartreuse, never achieved significant fame but did manage to putter along for several decades. Though the drink was not unknown on the menus of fashionable West Coast hotel bars, it existed less in the glass than on the page. It is one of those drinks that, once included in a bartender’s guide, gets copied into other compendia, which leads to further copying into mixology manuals to come. A fairly sweet version of the drink, made with Old Tom gin, Chartreuse, and orange bitters, can be found in the 1913 Straub’s Manual of Mixed Drinks. By the time it was copied into the famous Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, it had become a drier drink made with 3 parts dry gin to 1 part Chartreuse. “So far as can be ascertained this delectable potion is NOT the staple diet of the Esquimaux,” the book joked. “It was probably first thought of in South Carolina—hence its name.” Lame joshing aside, the Alaska is a worthy Martini variation, especially if one reduces the sweetness dramatically by dialing back the Chartreuse, and indeed it is something of a cult drink among modern cocktail aficionados. It is best at 6 or 8 parts gin to 1 part yellow Chartreuse, especially if one restores the dash of orange bitters (a nicety that got lost sometime during Prohibition).

*Recipe: Stir 75 ml dry gin and 22 ml yellow Chartreuse with ice and strain into a chilled Martini glass.

Craddock, Harry. The Savoy Cocktail Book. London: Constable & Co, 1930.

“Fashions in Mixed Drinks.” Guthrie Daily Leader*, October 18, 1905, 2.

By: Eric Felten