Aviation

Wayfinder

The Aviation is a gin sour with a sky in the glass. Hugo Ensslin published the original recipe in his 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks, the first known printed source: gin, maraschino liqueur, crème de violette, and fresh lemon juice. The crème de violette gives the drink its defining characteristic, a pale lavender colour between blue and grey, the colour of an early morning sky at altitude. For most of the twentieth century crème de violette was virtually impossible to source outside specialist suppliers, and the ingredient disappeared from most published versions. Bartenders made the drink without it for decades, a perfectly good gin sour with maraschino that lacked the colour and floral dimension the original was built around. When Rothman and Winter relaunched their crème de violette for the American market in 2007, the original recipe was restored and the drink found a new generation willing to seek out the correct ingredients. The Aviation with crème de violette is a different drink from the one without it. The violet brings a floral softness no other ingredient replicates, sitting between the maraschino’s cherry complexity and the lemon’s tartness. The colour alone is worth the effort of finding the bottle.

High-ABVSpirit-ForwardShakenClassic

Glassware: Coupe Glass

Garnish: Maraschino Cherry ideally Luxardo placed in the centre of the drink

Ingredients

Serves

London Dry Gin

45ml

The backbone of the drink. A clean, high-juniper London Dry works best. The gin needs enough structure to hold its own against the maraschino and violet without competing with the delicate floral notes.

Crème de violette

1 bar spoon

A bar spoon and no more. The official measure treats violette as a colour and a perfume rather than a third ingredient, and a heavier pour turns the drink soapy and takes the pale lavender towards purple.

Maraschino liqueur

15ml

Luxardo is the standard. Provides cherry sweetness and a faint bitter almond note that bridges the violet and the lemon.

Fresh lemon juice

15ml

Squeezed immediately before use. Provides the tartness that balances the sweetness of the maraschino and crème de violette.

Instructions

Add the gin, crème de violette, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lemon juice to a shaker.

Fill with cubed ice.

Shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds until well chilled.

Double strain through a fine mesh strainer into a chilled coupe.

Place a maraschino cherry in the centre of the drink and serve immediately.

Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 12 August 2026.

Expert Tip

Find the crème de violette. The Aviation without it is a decent gin sour with maraschino; with it, the drink is something else entirely, and the floral dimension is not replicable by any other ingredient. The colour is a balance indicator as well as a visual quality. Too much violette and the drink turns an unappetising grey-purple with the floral note dominating; too little and both the colour and the violet disappear into the lemon and maraschino. A bar spoon gives the pale lavender the drink is named for. Luxardo maraschino is the standard here as it is in the Last Word. Generic bottles are sweeter and less complex and push the drink toward cloying, and with two liqueurs already contributing sweetness the quality of both matters. Chill the glass. The Aviation is served without ice and its colour fades as the temperature rises.

Flavour Profile

FloralCitrusCherryHerbalTart

The Missing Ingredient

Most drinks do not have a missing ingredient story. The Aviation does. Hugo Ensslin’s 1916 original had four components: gin, maraschino liqueur, crème de violette, and fresh lemon juice. The violette disappeared from virtually every later published version, supply rather than preference: it became increasingly difficult to source in the United States and United Kingdom. Made without it, the Aviation was a serviceable gin and maraschino sour, a good drink sharing a name with a great one. The 2007 Rothman and Winter relaunch was treated as a restoration rather than a novelty. The ingredient had been missing. Now it was back.

Hugo Ensslin

Hugo Ensslin was head bartender at the Hotel Wallick in New York and published Recipes for Mixed Drinks in 1916, the last significant American cocktail manual before Prohibition. Modest next to Jerry Thomas’s earlier work, the book contains recipes including the Aviation and the Corpse Reviver variations that became cornerstones of the modern classic cocktail revival. He worked when the craft was at a pre-Prohibition peak of sophistication not matched again until the late twentieth century; the Aviation is a product of that moment, precise, ingredient-led, and built around a component that required genuine effort to source even then.

Crème de Violette

Crème de violette is a liqueur made from violet flowers, sweet but not heavily so, with a delicate floral character and a natural lavender colour that transfers into any drink. In the Aviation it appears at 15ml, the smallest measure in the recipe, deliberately: not the lead ingredient but the element that gives the drink its identity, the colour, the name, and the floral lift above maraschino and lemon. Too much and it dominates, turning the drink an unappetising grey; too little and it is lost. Rothman and Winter is the most widely available quality producer and Giffard also produce a crème de violette that works well; colour and intensity vary by producer, so the 15ml measure may need minor adjustment: taste before serving on the first attempt.

Maraschino

Maraschino appears here for the same reason it appears in the Last Word: cherry sweetness and a faint bitter almond note that bridges other ingredients without duplicating them. It sits between the floral violet and the tart lemon, softening the citrus and giving the violet a partner. Luxardo is the standard producer and the correct choice, drier and more complex than generic alternatives. In a recipe with only four ingredients the quality of each one is directly audible in the finished drink.

The Colour

The colour is not a gimmick; it is the drink’s most immediate statement of what it contains. A correctly made Aviation produces a pale lavender between blue and grey that, held to light, looks like early morning sky. That is why it is named what it is. The colour is also a balance indicator: too blue or too purple and the violette measure is too high; barely present and it is too low or the lemon has overwhelmed it. A correctly balanced Aviation is pale and luminous, not deeply coloured. The subtlety is the point.

The Version Without Violette

The Aviation without crème de violette is a gin sour with maraschino. It is a good drink. It is not the Aviation. Making it without the violet and calling it the Aviation is like a Bijou without the Chartreuse: the structure without the identity. If crème de violette is unavailable, make a gin and maraschino sour and call it what it is. Ensslin included the violet for a reason, and that reason is present in every glass that contains it.

The Spirit

Gin

A flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.

Learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Aviation?

A gin sour of gin, maraschino liqueur, crème de violette, and fresh lemon juice. Hugo Ensslin published it in his 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks; the violette gives it a pale lavender colour, an early morning sky at altitude.

Why do some recipes leave out the crème de violette?

Supply, not preference: violette became nearly impossible to source for most of the twentieth century, so it vanished from published versions until Rothman and Winter relaunched it in 2007. Without it you have a gin and maraschino sour, a good drink but not the Aviation.

Why so little crème de violette?

At 15ml it is the smallest measure by design: enough for the colour, the name, and the floral lift, but too much turns the drink an unappetising grey. A correct Aviation is pale and luminous, not deeply coloured; taste before serving on the first attempt.

Master the Techniques

How to Shake a Cocktail Like a Pro

Last Word

The Last Word is one of the great equal-parts cocktails: gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice in identical measures, shaken and served up. No component leads and no component follows. Each of the four is assertive enough to dominate a lesser recipe, and the fact that none dominates this one is the drink’s central achievement. It originated at the Detroit Athletic Club around 1915, documented by Ted Saucier in his 1951 book Bottoms Up and attributed to vaudeville performer Frank Fogarty, who allegedly introduced it to the club. It disappeared almost entirely during and after Prohibition and was rediscovered in the early 2000s by Seattle bartender Murray Stenson, who found it in Saucier’s book and put it on the menu at the Zig Zag Café. From there it spread through the craft cocktail world and has not left. The revival was deserved. Green Chartreuse brings herbal intensity, maraschino brings cherry sweetness and a faint bitter almond note, fresh lime brings tartness, and gin holds it together. Each sip reveals a different component leading depending on where in the glass you are. It is a drink worth paying attention to.

Yellow Jacket

A gin sour built around two natural allies. Yellow Chartreuse and honey syrup share a floral, herbal sweetness that neither achieves alone, and fresh lemon juice cuts through both with clean tartness. London Dry gin provides the backbone, holding its own against the Chartreuse's complexity without overwhelming the delicacy of the honey. The pairing is not obvious until you taste it. Yellow Chartreuse is built around chamomile, saffron and alpine botanicals; good honey carries floral notes from the flowers the bees visited. They do not duplicate each other so much as extend each other, and the drink's character comes almost entirely from the way the two sit together in the glass. The result is bright, aromatic and golden in the glass. Herbal without being aggressive. Sweet without being cloying. Tart without being sharp. The Yellow Jacket sits in its own space on the sour spectrum, recognisable in structure but quite distinctive in character, and it is one of the cleaner expressions of yellow Chartreuse anywhere in the canon.

Bee’s Knees

The Bee’s Knees is a gin sour built on honey syrup instead of sugar, documented in the early 1920s and born of a practical problem. Prohibition gin was frequently terrible, and honey and lemon are both strongly flavoured enough to cover for a spirit that needed covering for. What makes it worth making now is the inversion. The combination chosen to hide a bad gin turns out to be exceptionally good at showing off a good one, because honey and gin occupy overlapping territory. Gin is defined by botanicals; honey is itself a botanical product, its character set by whatever the bees visited. The honey does not simply sweeten the gin, it extends it in a register the gin already occupies. Three ingredients, no egg, nothing complicated. Built with a proper London Dry and a properly made honey syrup it is brighter and more layered than the ingredient list has any right to suggest.