Division Bell
Phil Ward's 2009 Last Word variant from Mayahuel, his East Village agave bar: mezcal, Aperol, maraschino, and lime under a grapefruit twist, named for the 1994 Pink Floyd album.
Division Bell
Origin: highHigh confidence: the main claims on this page are backed by primary sources (regulatory documents, peer-reviewed research, or direct producer attestation) and have been verified against the editorial correction log.Phil Ward · Mayahuel, New York City · 2009
Ingredients
- 30 mlmezcal joven
- 22 mlAperol
- 15 mlmaraschino liqueur(Luxardo)
- 22 mlfresh lime juice
Method
Shake all ingredients hard with ice. Double-strain into a chilled coupe. Express a grapefruit twist over the surface.
Editor's note: A Last Word variant in the mezcal idiom. Named after the 1994 Pink Floyd album.
The Division Bell is what Phil Ward made once he had a whole bar's worth of agave spirits to work with. In 2009, after leaving Death & Co, Ward opened Mayahuel in the East Village with Ravi DeRossi, a bar devoted to agave spirits, and the Division Bell appeared on its opening cocktail list. The drink is a Last Word variant in the mezcal idiom: mezcal joven, Aperol, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice, shaken, double-strained into a chilled coupe, and finished with a grapefruit twist expressed over the surface.
The Last Word, the classical equal-parts template of gin, Chartreuse, maraschino, and lime, is one of the most productive skeletons in modern bartending, and Ward's variant makes two decisive substitutions: mezcal for the gin and Aperol for the Chartreuse. He also lets go of the equal-parts dogma. The build tilts toward the mezcal and cuts the maraschino back to a supporting role, so the Luxardo's cherry richness seasons the drink rather than steering it, while the Aperol's bitter orange and the grapefruit oils from the twist pull in the same citrus direction.
The name has nothing to do with agave. Ward christened the drink after The Division Bell, the 1994 Pink Floyd album he listened to during Mayahuel's buildout. The attribution is documented to a degree most twentieth-century tequila drinks never approach: the drink appears on Mayahuel's opening cocktail list, and both Difford's Guide and the Mezcal Reviews archive confirm the date and the venue.
The Division Bell sits at the midpoint of a short, well-recorded lineage. Ward's Oaxaca Old Fashioned had made mezcal viable on New York menus in 2007 by pairing it with reposado tequila; the Division Bell gave it the whole stage in 2009; and Joaquín Simó's Naked and Famous, another Last Word descendant created two years later at Death & Co, carried the idiom onto the IBA's official list and into bars worldwide. Few periods of cocktail history are documented this precisely, with the inventors alive, the opening menus in print, and the trade press writing in real time. For that record, see the cocktails chapter; for the spirit that carries the drink, start with the mezcal entry.