The last word was a pre-prohibition cocktail served at the Detroit Athletic Club around 1915 and was most likely created by a Bartender named Frank Fogerty. It was first published in Ted Saucier’s Bottoms Up in 1951. The Recipe was forgotten for decades until it was re-discovered in Saucier’s book by Seattle Bartender Murray Stenson who put it on the menu at The Zig Zag Club. It was there that its popularity exploded and in short order became a staple on cocktail menus the world over.

Partly because it’s a near-perfect cocktail, or as perfect as a cocktail can be, and partly because it’s equal parts construction and clearly delineated concept and partly because it emerged as the cocktail scene was exploding in the early 2000’s the last word has spawned an entire category of riffs.