Aviation Cocktail
I have absolutely nothing to back this up but I’m going to peg the naissance of cocktail culture in the United States to the first season of Sex and the City. Up until that point we were all drinking overpriced craft beers, trying to out-IPA each other with our knowledge of brewing techniques and ingredients. Or if you weren’t doing that, you were ironically drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon to show you were too cool to get involved. Not coincidentally, I’d say this was also the advent of the hipster. You couldn’t move for fixed gear bikes and waxed mustaches. But then suddenly, we were all ordering Cosmos and spending nine hours on Sunday at brunch. I couldn’t help but wonder, what the hell happened?
Luckily for me I became allergic to beer right around then. One afternoon I was on a date drinking a triple fermented Belgian ale probably brewed by monks in a faraway land. I took one sip and my body decided it had had enough of this nonsense. I immediately flushed bright red, became profoundly congested and wondered briefly if anyone in the restaurant happened to have an epi pen. In the end I continued to breathe on my own but the date ended shortly thereafter.
Therefore, excused from the whole world of hops and barley, I was cast out into a no man’s land where I needed to find something else to drink while my friends talked about fermentation. Wine was the obvious choice and I did indulge but I always felt a little out of my depth so every time I ordered it was a blind guess as to whether I’d even be able to finish the glass. I needed a signature cocktail. I needed the go-to, don’t think about it, you’re always going to get the same thing drink.
I probably have The Violet Hour to thank for introducing me to the Aviation. The Violet Hour was the ur-cocktail bar in Chicago. The first one that mixed what was likely my first ever proper cocktail. Chicago’s connection to booze is long and storied so it feels exactly right to have found my signature drink in that city. For a long time I used whether or not a bar knew how to make one as a barometer for how “good” it was. I might as well have grown myself a waxed mustache. Nowadays they are pretty common if you’re in a bar that considers itself a cocktail bar.
The drink is really simple, light, bright, floral. I know I keep saying I don’t keep ingredients around that are for one thing but you will have to locate yourself a bottle of creme de Violette. Giffard makes the classic, we use Briottet. The classic recipe has maraschino liqueur in it but I drop a brandy soaked glace cherry in the bottom instead. (Not shown in the picture because I had already eaten it.)
