Photo by Tyler Zielinski
Created over a century ago, the Alaska cocktail recipe can be considered a variation on the martini. Its ingredients—gin, Yellow Chartreuse and orange bitters—mirror those of a classic martini, with Chartreuse replacing vermouth.
The Alaska cocktail was first printed in 1913, in Jacques Straub’s Straub’s Manual of Mixed Drinks (later republished as Drinks), and gained prominence through its inclusion in 1930’s The Savoy Cocktail Book, among others. The golden-hued drink is thought to not have been created in Alaska itself, but rather named for the for the territory which had experienced a series of gold rushes around the turn of the 20th century.
