Some things are easy to love: puppies, snow days, pizza, Lizzo. Others are an acquired taste: espresso, oysters, Neil Young’s voice. These things take time to appreciate, but they’re worth it once you do. For me, mezcal tops that list. Tequila is my drink, and everything is better smoky — but try as I might, I could not get there with mezcal. That is, until I tried the Palabra at E3 Chophouse. The cocktail is a play on The Last Word, a gin-based pre-Prohibition drink that uses mezcal in place of gin (“palabra” is Spanish for “word”). To that they add lime, Green Chartreuse and Luxardo Maraschino. Look, I get it. Typically, if I read “green” and “maraschino” in a drink description, I am out. But this works, and there are three reasons why.
First, Green Chartreuse is legit. The liqueur has been distilled by Carthusian Monks in the French Alps since the 1700s. Its bright-green color comes from 130 plants and herbs, which means it’s far more complex than it appears. (It’s the Dolly Parton of liqueurs in that way.) Secondly, Luxardo Maraschino is not what you think it is. The clear liqueur is made from sour marasca cherries, found mainly on the coast of Croatia, and it has a dry, bitter, nutty flavor. Thirdly, it is strong, which will help you forget you’re in a bar partly owned by Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, charter members of the Bro-Country Club. But I’ll give this drink to them — or rather, I’ll give it to beverage director Brooke Sutter. You get herbaceousness from Chartreuse, bitterness and sweetness from Luxardo, tartness from the lime and smokiness from mezcal. The amount of stuff going on in this drink is bonkers, and for people looking to dip a toe into mezcal, that’s exactly why it works.
