How to Make an Aviation, One of the Great Pre-Prohibition Cocktails

This was invented at a time when the term aviation contained within it the limitless potential of human flight. As opposed to now, where it mostly denotes people in sweatpants hate tweeting at Delta Airlines about weather delays. The aviation is, as far as we know, is the last great drink to be invented before Prohibition. Before the curtain of Prohibition drops in 1919. And it's one of the first ones to get kind of picked up and dusted off by the craft cocktail renaissance that we now enjoy. People were making it as early as the 90s. Now at its core, this drink is just a gin sour. It's just gin, something sweet, and something sour to balance the sweet. What makes it distinct, and what gives it so much staying power, is that the sweetness comes from two different liqueurs. From maraschino liqueur, that has kind of an earthy pungency, and creme de violette, which is beautiful and floral and slightly tart, and if you use even a little too much of it, it tastes like grandma's bathroom. Which is one of the reasons why some people don't like this drink. This isn't a universally beloved drink, but the people who do love it, tend to love it with the passion of a zealot. So let's find out which you are. To make an aviation, we start with our lemon juice. We need three quarters of one ounce of fresh lemon juice. This is the sour part, it's gonna balance the sweetness of the liqueurs. Next, the maraschino, spelled the same as the sundae cherries, but by the strange rules of Italian pronunciation, it is maraschino, not maraschino. If you screw it up, it doesn't matter, but no matter what you say, it is a half ounce. Next, the creme de violette. This was a forgotten cocktail ingredient, resurrected I think around 2005, more or less explicitly for this drink. As mentioned, use a little too much and it'll taste far too floral, so we are doing one quarter of an ounce. And last, the gin, star of the show. For my aviation recipes, I like to use 1.75 ounces of gin, almost two ounces. I realize 1.75 ounces is kind of an obnoxious measurement, but there's a reason for it, I promise. And the reason is this, that your sole sweeteners in this drink are these two liqueurs. You don't want any more of either of these flavors, but sometimes it's not sweet enough. So what do you do with that? You can use a full pour of gin if you want to, you can use a full two ounces, and if you do, I recommend just like a bar spoon of simple syrup, just a little bit, just to kind of help push the sweetness a little up, because it could be kind of unforgivingly tart otherwise. What I like to do in this particular case is to take kind of a softer gin, a gin that isn't too punchy, and use just slightly less of it. The less of the spirit you use, the less sweetness you'll require. That's why 1.75 ounces. And then we add ice, and we shake it up. We strain into a coupe or sour glass, if you can pre-chill it, even better. And I'm gonna double strain this time, because when you shake real hard like I do, you get a bunch of ice bits, gets all the tiny little broken ice fragments out of it. As for a garnish, there's a lot of things you can do. The presence of the maraschino suggests that a cherry might be nice. If you have a maraschino cherry, follow that instinct. Give you the Aviation. Let's give it a shot. This drink, this is a great drink. I get that it's not for everybody. So there are some drinks, like the Mojito or the Eastside Ricky, that are crowd pleasers, that are for everybody. I could make them for a group of 100 people, and I'm gonna get 100 compliments. The Aviation, not so. You can't just make this blind for anybody. This is a very particular type of cocktail, and it's for a very particular type of drinker. Because it evokes a different time. Both of these liqueurs are unusual. They're a little weird. The cocktail is delicious, but if you're not ready for that kind of thing, it may not land. But if you are, it's absolutely wonderful.