St. Patrick’s Day (AKA Everybody’s Irish)

So I decided to make this drink out of season because I have the ingredients and I assumed that it would be a tragedy like most St. Patrick’s Day themed drinks. I wasn’t wrong. Of course the color of the original recipe would be a deeper green because of the real creme de menthe, but it would have also made the drink an even more awful. I used my own homemade creme de menthe with real mint, and that might have saved this cocktail from wasting my good liquor.

So this drink falls into the “Things I don’t want to waste my Irish whiskey on” category. The best drinks are made as solutions to a problem—like “how can I find a way to make this base liquor taste better by adding stuff to it?” kind of problem. The worst drinks are made with no consideration to what each component tastes like and proportions are judged in order to create a desired appearance. These can be dreadful, thought they might look attractive. This drink belongs to the latter category, because who doesn’t like a little Chartreuse or Irish whiskey, just not in the same drink.

It began almost too herbaceous with the Chartreuse standing out too much as I thought it would. The creme de menthe gave a similarly herbaceous cool in the finish. The problem was that I couldn’t taste the whiskey at all and that made adding bitters a bit of a mistake. It was already pretty bitter.
Then about midway through, I started to enjoy it because I was getting drunk. The mix of liquors was strong and a drinker can rightly say that they are Irish after drinking this cocktail—but then they might admit to a lot of things as well. Here’s the recipe if you want to experience it yourself:

• 2 oz. Irish whiskey
• 1/2 oz. green Chartreuse
• 1/2 oz. creme de menthe
• several dashes of bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add several dashes of bitters.