Back in my late 20s, a few years after I got interested in cooking and started doing a lot of it, I decided that I also needed to get interested in wine and start doing a lot of it, too, because good food needs good wine. Before that I had never been much of an alcohol consumer—for whatever reason nothing had ever really taken with me, and I didn’t work hard enough at it. Except tequila—I’ve long been fond of that.

The wine project took some effort on my part, but I stuck with it. I read books. I bought stemware. I did tastings. I built a database. Before long I was enjoying wine and had my own wine cellar (well, a small closet in the basement with a few racks of bottles). Now there are many many meals that don’t seem right if wine isn’t served with them.

So wine turned out to be a big success, but I’ve never managed to like beer, and generally when I tried liquors I didn’t enjoy them either (several years ago I made an unsuccessful push to develop a taste for Scotch, but that didn’t work out). As a result I never bothered with mixed drinks, aside from good margaritas (and “good” usually requires that I make them myself).

Late in December, E**** and I went out to dinner at a restaurant that was disappointing in most respects but that had an interesting cocktail menu, heavy on “vintage” cocktails. For some reason I decided that I should try a cocktail that night rather than going straight to the wine. As I scanned the list, one stood out for me based in its description, despite the fact that the ingredients meant nothing to me: The Last Word, which contains gin (had never had much of it before), Green Chartreuse (huh? What’s that? And isn’t “green chartreuse” redundant?) Luxardo Maraschino (huh?), lime juice (oh, I like that!). So I ordered it, fully expecting to not like it one bit, and soon a beautiful green drink arrived, with a lime wheel floating in it.

Reader, let me tell you: I loved it. In hindsight, given my proclivity for margaritas, it’s not surprising: the drink is a good blend of sweet and sour, heavy on the lime, but with a lot of complexity from the Chartreuse. E**** had a taste and loved it as well. That drink turned out to be the best part of the meal.

On the walk home from the restaurant we popped in to a liquor store for something else we needed, and were pleasantly surprised to stumble on a bottle of Green Chartreuse, which we of course bought. Back at home, we sipped Chartreuse on the rocks while we read about it. The color chartreuse, it turns out, is named for the liquor Chartreuse, which comes in two varieties: green and yellow. Chartreuse is an herbal liqueur, made (so they say) from 130 herbs.

We were hooked. The next day I was at the liquor store buying gin. The state-run liquor stores in Virginia don’t carry Luxardo, so I had to make a trip to D.C. to pick that up, but then we were in business. Come New Year’s Eve, we were loaded up on Last Words long before we made it to the Champagne. Since then we’ve been introducing others to this drink every chance we get (though we have been somehow surprised that not everyone likes it as much as we do).

In the process I discovered that I like gin quite a bit, and from there it was a very short step to wondering what else I had been missing out on all this time in terms of liquor and cocktails. It turns out I have been missing out on a lot (and/or my tastes have changed over the years so I am better able to appreciate many of the liquors—I recently tried Scotch again and discovered that I very much like it this time around). So I took on cocktails as a new hobby, and launched into it as I do any other hobby: full speed ahead. I’ve bought books. I’ve read blogs. I haven’t built a database but I did start a cocktail recipe/note book. My liquor cabinet has grown dramatically and at the moment contains more bottles than my wine cellar. I’ve focused on vintage and classic cocktails, which appeal to my nerdy and snobbish sensibilities.

With all the experimenting with other drinks, several weeks passed without me having a Last Word, and I was starting to wonder how it would hold up now that I had been trying some other things. Would it seem less spectacular and novel? Then came an occasion to make up a round of them, and the drink was every bit as good as I remembered it.

I’ve had some good and interesting drinks in the last two months, but nothing that stands out for me the way the Last Word does. Only two other drinks have even come close for me: the Aviation (which replaces the Last Word’s lime juice with lemon juice and its Chartreuse with Crème de Violette) and the classic Manhattan, which is great in a completely different way.

Now I’m constantly wondering: will the next drink I have replace the Last Word in my heart, or will the Last Word remain the last word in cocktails for me?