I've always envied those people who sidle up to the bar and without dithering say: Scotch. Rocks.

I think Scotch tastes like Band-Aids.

I’ve left a wake of cherry stems, olives, and other hungover destruction in my search for a signature cocktail.

In New York, a dirty martini was my thing--until a bartender asked me just how dirty I liked it.

I cleaned up my act with a mandarin vodka with soda water--until its insipidness made me question if that was really the company I wanted to keep.

Bitter-yet-sweet Campari defined me for a while--in a Negroni if I was feeling pensive, with soda and an orange if I was feeling playful.

Then I fell for a vodka gimlet.

Despite a rough patch I refer to as the "canker sore period", we were monogamous and so very happy--until one night when a tall, handsome, chiseled bottle wearing a gold crown caught my eye.

One sniff of St-Germain's elderflower fragrance and I was twirling around the hillsides of the French Alps. The very hillsides that, as the impossibly idyllic story goes, forty to fifty men canvass in the late spring, picking the white, star-shaped blossoms by hand and delivering them by bicycle.

Quel charme!

Still, notwithstanding the liqueur's obvious lures, it was too sweet to stand on its own.

And I was ashamed of my capriciousness.

Then sour met sweet. And they both met vodka. And now my quest is complete.

French Gimlet

Makes 2

Pour 4 ounces of vodka (or gin), 2 ounces of St-Germain, and 1-1/2 ounces of freshly squeezed lime juice into a shaker filled with ice. Shake it like it's your job and then strain the cocktail into two martini glasses or champagne coups that you were slick enough to stick in the freezer ahead of time. Garnish with twists of lime zest or thin slices of lime. Pronounce it gim-lay because it's a French one. Repeat as necessary.