Triomphe Cocktail
1 1/2 oz Vodka
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1/2 oz 1-1 Simple Syrup
Shake well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
At work, we often get asked for vodka cocktails. We have a few in the bar book, and quite a few of the gin cocktails can be made to work well enough with vodka. But I still try to struggle to think up new and interesting vodka cocktails that customers enjoy. I’ve gotten good response to this one.
The Triomphe is a variation on the Savoy Cocktail, Champs Elysees, made with vodka instead of Brandy. And to be honest, I kind of prefer it to the original Brandy version. It turns out less busy, and is a better feature for the Yellow Chartreuse. Not entirely happy with the name, but the Arc de Triomphe is on the Champs Elysees in Paris, so that’s why I gave it that name. It’s also something of a personal “Triumph” for me, whenever I think of a vodka cocktail I actually like.
Of course, smart aleck servers like to point out that another way of looking at the “Triomphe” is as a slightly herbal Lemon Drop.