Creative Drinking

Still flying high. My love affair with the Aviation Cocktail.

The Aviation Cocktail, in my opinion, is the perfect drink. It is boozy. It is tart. It is sweet. It is balanced (provided you make it right) and it is the reason I stopped drinking flavored vodkas and other awful things that I used to call a drink. It all started innocently enough with a text from a friend in DC telling me about this cocktail he was having at some high falutin bar with something called Creme de Violette.

I was intrigued. But not enough to stop me from making a "martini" ten minutes later with Fruit Loops flavored vodka and half and half with Froot Loops floating on top. I was so proud that it tasted like the milk you have leftover when you finish your cereal and that "you couldn't even taste the alcohol". Yikes. Cut to a few months later and I was in a large liquor store in Maryland seeing if I could score any new flavored vodkas that I couldn't find in PA when I spotted a bottle of Rothman & Winter Creme de Violette. With its dark purple color and tall slender art deco labeled bottle, I decided to buy it and text my friend later for the ingredients of that drink he had (still have no idea what it was but that ship has long since sailed). Creme de Violette has a wonderful floral taste but it is on the sweet side, a bit perfumey, and almost soapy. It has been described by a friend of mine as tasting like "her grandmother's drawers". In any case, I was a fan but I had no clue what to do with it now that I had it and it just remained a random oddity in my liquor cabinet. After drinking it on the rocks (??????) for a spell, I finally decided to look up some cocktails online using CdV. The Aviation was pretty much the one and only thing that came up, over and over and over. "Hmmm..gin, lemon, maraschino liqueur (? maraschino cherry syrup and a little vodka would suffice, right?), and Creme de Violette. Well, I went ahead and fixed myself an Aviation with the first recipe I found online, not knowing in my flavored vodka world that maraschino liqueur has NOTHING to do with the artificially colored bright red maraschino cherries we all know and (sort of)love. Maraschino liqueur is actually a clear, dry liqueur made from the distillation of Marasca cherries, pits, stems and seeds (I was to discover later).Pick up any old cocktail book and you'll find it in dozens of recipes. It adds a wonderful earthy complexity and assertiveness to cocktails. Needless to say, the cherry juice and vodka combo I came up with did not add up to anything other than something I dumped down the drain immediately. This had nothing to do with the gin, as I've always been a gin fan as well, but the sum of the parts of a real Aviation, of which I knew nothing.

Luxardo maraschino has since become one of the most necessary bottles in my bar. It is probably the single most consistent ingredient in the drinks that I love. It is indispensable in an Aviation of course, but is also the backbone to many other wonderful cocktails. It adds a great twist to a Manhattan and I find it quite nice on the rocks as well.

Cut to a year later. Manchester, England. My 40th birthday trip with an old friend. Exploring the city on our first day, and killing some time before the 6pm mass at Manchester Cathedral that we decided would be a very cultural thing for us to do, we decided to check out this cool looking corner pub called Trof and have a drink or two. I walked in and, in my then ignorance, I ordered a cider (naturally) and failed to appreciate or even notice the treasures that were surely behind the bar (I took one of the menus so I kind of have an idea....the bottles of Amer Picon, Havana Club..oh the list is too painful). Anyway, I noticed on the menu, The Aviation Cocktail. Well by this time the Manchester Cathedral thing was relegated to just a nice thought we had earlier in the day so I thought I would order an Aviation to see if this bartender could do any better. "I'll have an Aviation, please". Down comes the bottle of Beefeater, the Creme de Violette, and then this mysterious green bottle wrapped in straw. The maraschino thing was still unknown to me so I assumed it was some sort of British cherry juice? I watched the bartender go to work on this drink and it was way more involved than what I was used to seeing. Such careful measurements, not one strain but two, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and then the cherry dropped in at the end. This was my first experience with a craft cocktail and it was fascinating.

One sip. WOW. This was like nothing I had ever tasted. Not that it was intense or offensive or overpowering, it was just the first time that, aside from a Negroni, I felt like I was having a REAL cocktail, and a classic cocktail at that. Tastes that I was unfamiliar with and it was fresh and exciting. A little history into the background of the Aviation....

The recipe first appeared in 1916 in Hugo Ensslin's book "Recipes For Mixed Drinks, though it had been floating around for a few years before that. Following Prohibition in 1933, The Savoy Cocktail Book from The Savoy, London's first luxury hotel, printed the recipe without the violette. It has become widely believed that it was simply an oversight, but nonetheless this became the standard recipe, a mixture of sour from the lemon and the assertiveness of the maraschino, and inevitably led to Cdv's obscurity and complete disappearance from the US market in the 1960s.

My first Aviation. Trof, Manchester, 2012. My facebook post said "Possibly, POSSIBLY my new favorite cocktail"

Then, after decades, in 2007, Rothman & Winter Creme de Violette appears on the US market and the true Aviation can once again be made, but not without controversy. The Aviation was one of, if not THE drink that led the classic cocktail renaissance, but there were (still are) two camps. One with the Violette and one that follows the long published Violette-free version. In my opinion, there is no point in an Aviation without CdV. It brings a sweetness and a unique flavor profile that is just not there without it. Aside from the fact that it adds the color of the light blue sky for which it is believed the drink was named, as the sport was widely fashionable at the time.

So back to me. This cocktail changed the way that I would drink forever though it didn't happen overnight. I still spent the rest of my European vacation ordering St-Germain and Campari and things that I was used to but I slowly started learning to move away from vodka and discover different types of gin which led to bourbons and ryes, brandies and rums, cordials and bitters. Old forgotten sprits and recipes. Centuries old Punches. Batavia Arrack and Swedish Punsch. It's become a passion like no other, bringing the history and the TASTES of these old, wonderful remnants of the past into the present. Parfait Amour, Maurin Quina, Byyrh...Genever...these all have a taste of another world..a time gone by. And, for me, it all goes back to that day in Manchester and my very first Aviation.

So....about that. My tastes have changed considerably since my first Aviation post a couple years ago. I have tried countless variations since. Different gins, alternate brands of CdV and maraschino...limes vs lemons...SEVERAL SEVERAL SEVERAL different ratios....the addition of Benedictine and bitters (which is delightful but altogether a different drink), absinthe rinses, grapefruits, simple syrup (also nice) but it all comes back to the four core ingredients and I think I have finally found the measures that suit me to a (one) T.  

Ingredients:

• 2 oz Old Tom Gin (Hayman's)or Boomsma Oude Genever. If you can't find either of these at your liquor store, a quality London Dry would work fine.
• just over 1/2 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur (the only brand to buy. period.)
• just over 1/2 oz lemon juice (3/4 is too much, 1/3 not enough- same goes for Lux)
• 1 teaspoon Rothman & Winter Creme de Violette
• 1 Luxardo cherry to garnish. (or a red cherry or lemon twist)

Shake with ice and double strain (with fine mesh strainer) into chilled cocktail glass. I think it benefits from the lack of pulp and bits of ice).

Now, you may think that 1 teaspoon (of CdV) wouldn't make much of a difference one way or another but I really think it's the perfect amount. It adds the sweetness, the balance, and the color without upsetting any of the other ingredients.

I think I've said enough. I love classic cocktails. I no longer see drinking as a way to get drunk. In fact, I wish that I could drink without the worry of getting drunk. The tastes of good spirit mixed with fresh ingredients and fantastic amaros and liqueurs and bitters are like none other. In the last couple years I have accumulated a bar that would give any NYC bar a run for its money and this has allowed me to enjoy experimenting with unusual liqueurs and spirits and creating endless delicious (most of them, anyway) cocktails. But the Aviation (no matter how I may decide I like it best at any given time) is one I will always be obsessed with. It is not only my sentimental favorite, it is the reason I am sitting here typing this. Make one now.