The Alaska, a simple mix of gin, yellow Chartreuse and orange bitters, hails from the beginning of the 20th century. The “delectable potion,” as it was described in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, has all the trappings of modern success: It’s essentially a Martini riff, made with the liqueur everyone can’t stop talking about. It looks both demure in a Nick & Nora and, thanks to its golden hue, a little playful in a V-shaped glass. Yet for all its appeal, it has taken nearly a century for the drink to finally get its due. Now it dots menus at top bars, and there’s never been a better time to order one.
Today, it seems, the Alaska is also a straw-colored mirror refracting the spirit of a bar, whether it’s one that serves caviar-topped chicken nuggets or pays homage to French history.
For example, if you want to have an Alaska 64 floors up in the sky (or simply feel as though you are), Overstory’s Last Frontier is here for you. Like its glossy surroundings, the riff is appropriately dressed up, with manzanilla sherry and verjus imparting saline and acid, and two gins—a satsuma-based Japanese one made from a redistilled shochu, and a beeswax-washed London dry—adding even more nuance to the base. It’s gilded glamour in a glass.
Or, if you prefer an Alaska that has let itself a little loose, Coqodaq is home to both the aforementioned nugget and a supercharged take on the classic cocktail. Bar manager Matt Chavez swaps the yellow Chartreuse for green, and with that, skews the faint yellow of the drink to an electric neon by spiking it with Midori. Today, many modern iterations of the Alaska exchange the original spec’s Old Tom gin for a London dry, and Coqodaq does the same, bolstering that with a small dose of vodka.
At Le Rock, meanwhile, an Art Deco haven for French cocktails, the Alaska comes with a secret. Poured from a freezer bottle into a delicate glass and sidecar, beverage director Estelle Bossy’s version of the cocktail comes diluted with a special infusion. To add extra floral notes and herbal complexity, a cold infusion of herbs (including lemon verbena and mint) along with dried orange flower and linden takes inspiration from a tisane that Carthusian monks—the same ones who make Chartreuse—have before bed. Even without the illustrious backstory, L’Alaska stands out with its depth of flavor.
Of course, though, even stripped of fat washes, other liqueurs and infusions, the sunny-hued Martini riff still shines. According to Jim Kearns, a champion of the drink who has helped usher it into a modern era, the Alaska in its classic form needs no tweaking to be delicious. “I don’t know if that’s a drink I’d mess with as a whole,” he says. “It all works together extraordinarily well.”