Casino

Aviation

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.

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.

Gin Sour

The Gin Sour is the sour family’s plainest statement and one of its oldest: spirit, lemon and sugar, the template Jerry Thomas codified in 1862 applied to the botanical spirit, predating most of the famous gin drinks that descend from it. Every White Lady, Bee’s Knees and Clover Club is a Gin Sour that learned a second language. Its plainness is the point. Three ingredients expose the gin completely, which makes this the sour that teaches botanicals: a juniper-led London Dry gives the classic spine, while a citrus or floral gin turns the same spec into a different afternoon entirely. The optional egg white borrows the Boston Sour’s silk without changing the argument. It sits in the canon as the missing link drinkers skip past, ordering its descendants without ever meeting the ancestor. Made with a good gin and honest lemon, it explains in one glass why the template conquered the world.