Paper Plane

The Origin

Sam Ross was bartending at Milk & Honey on Eldridge Street in New York when he developed the Paper Plane in the mid-2000s. Milk & Honey was the bar that Sasha Petraske had opened in 1999 and that became one of the defining venues of the cocktail revival, known for its no-walk-ins policy, its commitment to technique, and its influence on a generation of bartenders who passed through it and carried its standards elsewhere. Ross was one of them. The Paper Plane is the drink that most visibly demonstrates what that environment produced.

He named it after the M.I.A. track that was playing during the development process, a detail that grounds the drink in a specific cultural moment without diminishing it. The song and the drink share a quality of controlled energy, something that moves quickly and precisely without appearing to try very hard. The Paper Plane has been on menus in serious cocktail bars around the world ever since it was first served and shows no signs of leaving.

The Last Word Inheritance

Ross has been direct about his inspiration. The Last Word, a Prohibition-era equal-parts build of gin, green Chartreuse, Luxardo Maraschino, and fresh lime juice, provided the structural template. The Paper Plane takes the same format, four ingredients in equal measure, shaken with fresh citrus, and translates it into a contemporary American idiom: bourbon in place of gin, Aperol in place of Chartreuse, Amaro Nonino in place of maraschino, lemon in place of lime.

The parallel is close enough to be instructive. Tasting the Last Word and the Paper Plane in sequence reveals both the consistency of the equal-parts format across different ingredient sets and the distinct character that each combination produces. The Last Word is herbal, sharp, and slightly medicinal. The Paper Plane is warmer, more fruit-forward, and more immediately approachable. Both are precisely balanced. Both are unforgiving of substitutions.

The Nonino Requirement

Amaro Nonino Quintessentia is produced in Friuli in northeastern Italy from a grappa base infused with a proprietary blend of herbs, roots, and fruit, then aged in oak. It is lighter in body and more delicate in character than most Italian amari, with a dried fruit and herbal complexity that sits at a different register from the more assertive bitterness of products like Campari or Fernet-Branca. In the Paper Plane, that delicacy is structural. The Aperol provides the bitterness. The Nonino provides the herbal depth and the mid-palate weight that bridges the bourbon and the citrus without competing with either.

Substituting a cheaper or more assertive amaro shifts the balance of the drink in a direction it was not designed for. The bitterness increases. The delicacy disappears. The four-way coherence that makes the equal-parts format work in this recipe depends on the specific character of Nonino and not on amaro as a category. Use the correct ingredient.

How to Serve It

Shaken and double strained into a chilled coupe with expressed lemon peel over the surface. This is a drink that works in multiple contexts, light enough for pre-dinner consumption but structured enough to hold its own after a meal. The bourbon gives it enough warmth and body to suit cold weather. The Aperol and lemon give it enough brightness and acidity to suit warm weather equally well. It is one of the few modern classics with genuine seasonal versatility, and that range is part of what has kept it on menus for nearly two decades.