Lemon Drop, very pretty - and sweet.

Byline: The Register-Guard

BEST TWIST ON A TRENDY COCKTAIL Bel Ami Lounge, Triomphe Midtown What: Tuaca Drop Where: 1591 Willamette St. Hours: From 4:30 p.m. to "close" Monday through Saturday Telephone: For reservations, call 485-6242 or 485-6268

The word cocktail first popped into the documented American lexicon in an 1806 newspaper article. That makes 2006, the 200th anniversary and The Year of the Cocktail - at least, as far as Team Best of ... is concerned.

To celebrate, we set out to find the Best Twist on a Trendy Cocktail. For a town with such a hippie rep, there sure are a lot of trendy cocktails to choose from so we had to narrow our scope to one cocktail and find variants of that.

One team member is a huge fan of the Lemon Drop, and because other members had too many favorite drinks, we went with the preference of the single-minded one.

The Lemon Drop is available anywhere they've got sugar, vodka, triple sec and lemon juice. However, if you're not careful, bartenders will serve it in a shot glass, so it's best to specify a "Lemon Drop martini," which sounds pretentious but gets the job done.

We decided the variations on the classic needed to be printed on specialty drink menus so the bar itself can get credit for the creation and not the drinker-orderer.

We're not as picky about what's mixed in as long as it's 1) alcohol 2) lemony 3) cold, but this race is won and lost at the sugared rim. Trendy cocktails are as much about presentation as taste, so when a waiter puts the drink on table and spills just enough to disturb the most meticulously sugared rim, that's bad.

Soriah Cafe's bartenders forever have our hearts because they don't fill the martini glass to the brim. Instead, they bring the shaker to your table so you can refresh your beverage as you consume it.

But Soriah has no special drink menu and so didn't qualify for this quest. Marche has the best raspberry drop you could imagine, but again, it's not on the menu; reluctantly, so we had to leave it out.

The ginger drop at Sweet Basil is one of the best - if you hit the place up on a Good Ginger Day. Their ginger-infused vodka is stronger sometimes than others. Stronger is better, so they need to find a way to, as "Idol" judge Randy Jackson would say, "work it out."

Consistency is a huge factor with Lemon Drops and their twisted counterparts. If the bar is too busy, an unfocused tender might slack on the sugar precision, leaving you with sticky fingers and no stolen goods to show for them.

We found only one exception to this rule: the $3 lemon drop at Cabana Blue Club. If a bar is only going to charge you three bucks, it has every right to haste. We'll scrape the excess sugar from the side of the glass with a napkin.

The Dutch Drop at 19th Street Cafe is a delight with its McMenamins gin mixed in, but that place has spotty service that insults a drink so cute and sweet as the Lemon Drop and her pretty cousins. Plus, its version came with no sugar on the rim.

So it came down to the Tuaca Citrus Drop at Lava Lounge and the Tuaca Drop at Bel Ami Lounge. Both places have ambience that rises to Lemon Drop esteem, and each has a drink special that is delicious, refreshing and pretty to the eye.

But as we said, this race is won and lost on the sugared rim. Bel Ami inched out the Lava Lounge because it used the super-fine sugar that doesn't tend to travel, leaving your expensive drink tidy till the last taste.

For a cocktail hour that's not too sweet, not too sour and rarely gets you sticky, dip your glass in the Best of ... archive: www .registerguard.com/bestof.