Phew. It’s been one hell of a week. Last week was full of car accidents and dreams about the Patriots and tigers. This week was taken up with party planning (ten year high school reunion, t-minus six months), a random score of some great LPs (Tom Jones, Frank Sinatra and David Bowie at 99¢!) and some sudden and relatively overwhelming work news. I shan’t bore you all with the details, but my responsibilities just cranked up to eleven.

Fortunately, it takes very little time to mix a cocktail—though it does take considerably longer to write them up. This one comes from Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide, Revised, but it dates at least as far back as the Savoy Cocktail Book. It’s one of those drinks that I flipped past and came back to, wondering “Did that really say what I think it said?” Generally speaking drinks that start out with “weird” as your primary adjective wind up as “bad” on the palette. Either I’m getting better at choosing which odd combinations are going to taste good or my tastebuds have died and left me in the lurch, but either way I quite enjoyed this odd little number.

1 oz gin
½ oz grapefruit juice
3 dashes maraschino liqueur

Shake all three ingredients well over ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and serve with an olive.

Let me guess—you were totally with this up until the olive, right? Gin, grapefruit, maraschino; slightly unusual but nothing terribly out of the ordinary, until you get to that olive. Surprisingly, the olive is actually good in this. I used a yellow grapefruit, so the juice had none of the sweetness you find in pink or red varieties, which is why the olive worked here. The maraschino lends an ephemeral, classic quality to this, while the grapefruit bridges between the botanicals of the gin and the fruitiness of the maraschino. The olive throws a little salty tang on the end, and the drink brings out the fruity side of the olive’s heritage. This isn’t one I’d recommend to the faint of heart, but definitely a good alternative when you feel like a martini but aren’t in the mood for something quite that stiff.