hummingbird down

2 oz Tanqueray Gin
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
3/4 oz Honey Syrup
1/4 oz Green Chartreuse

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with a mint leaf.

Two Thursdays ago, I reached for the Stir Your Soul book that contained the recipes from the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail event. The drink that called out to me was Chad Solomon and Christy Pope's Hummingbird Down that came across like a Bee's Knees crossed with a lime-less Green Ghost. The Regarding Cocktails book in the section containing the Rye Hummingbird discussed how Sasha Petraske was a fan of modifying the Bee's Knees such as swapping the citrus to lime to generate the Business, and this pushed Chad Solomon (and perhaps Christy Pope was involved but not mentioned there) to add Green Chartreuse to the mix; the Rye Hummingbird was Marcos Tello's next step in the progression by changing the base spirit to whiskey.
The Hummingbird Down offered mint, Green Chartreuse's herbal, honey floral, and juniper aromas to the nose. Next, lemon and honey mingled on the sip, and the swallow followed up with gin flavors leading into bright herbal ones from the Chartreuse.