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Watching a forgotten historic cocktail be revived into a flourishing, popular drink at modern cocktail bars can be a fascinating, surprisingly rapid process. Sometimes all it takes is the rediscovery or renewing of access to a key ingredient, something that makes a drink possible that had been more or less impossible the week before. There are a lot of bartenders out there who dabble as amateur drink historians, eager to dig up and reinvigorate the dusty old standards of generations past, provided that they can do so with legitimacy. In rare cases, this yields a cocktail like the Aviation, which blossomed from almost total obscurity to seemingly complete ubiquity within only a couple years at the end of the 2000s. In that moment, it seemed like the blue-hued, stemmed gin drink was everywhere, one of the leading lights of the cocktail revival, helping get new people into cocktails. And then, a funny thing happened: The cocktail/bartender scene that had rediscovered the Aviation and made it into a very popular bar order seemed to dramatically turn against the drink in the decade that followed, sending its trajectory plummeting right back down the way it came. To be certain, there are still people who love and make the drink, but it distinctly went from being cool to being passé once again in a few years’ time. The question is: Did it deserve it?
The Aviation has pre-Prohibition roots, something that wasn’t known until its rediscovery. For years, it had been associated with author/bartender Harry Craddock’s classic 1930 tome The Savoy Cocktail Book, and that recipe didn’t call for what is now the cocktail’s signature ingredient, Crème de Violette. Instead, it was a rather simple combination of simply gin, lemon juice and maraschino cherry liqueur, and it wasn’t a drink that inspired a lot of conversation. Its rise to popularity at the end of the 2000s followed the discovery of the drink’s original, earlier recipe in Huge Enslinn’s 1916 book Recipes for Mixed Drinks. This recipe included the Crème de Violette, which brought an entirely different dimension (and appearance) to the drink, a more striking blue/gray/purple visual that helped to make it an object of interest in the cocktail revival of the 2000s.
It is possible that the Crème de Violette had been omitted from Harry Craddock’s version of the Aviation because he simply didn’t care for it–the fact that this drink is divisive is a topic that will come up constantly in this essay. But it’s also possible that the ingredient had become too difficult to source and had thus been written out, as the availability of Crème de Violette trailed off during Prohibition and afterward. It wouldn’t be until 2007 that importer Haus Alpenz began bringing the Austrian-made Rothman & Winter Crème de Violette to the U.S. market, where it became the most easily located brand of the liqueur, which as the name suggests is made with macerated violet flowers. Other commercial Crème de Violette expressions quickly followed, from brands like Giffard and The Bitter Truth, or the somewhat similar Creme Yvette, which also includes berries, citrus peel and vanilla. All of them found their way into the surging Aviation cocktail.
So, what do people like about the Aviation cocktail? Well, the theory behind the drink is to take a solid gin and add in layers of floral, nutty and brightly citric influences. The signature Crème de Violette is said to taste like old-fashioned violet candies, but honestly, who among us can say they’ve ever tasted one of those? Suffice to say, it’s floral and lightly sweet, possibly earthy. The maraschino adds its bittersweetly floral, nutty, slightly fruity character. Lemon juice provides the tart verve. The original Aviation cocktail recipe, as written, is a fairly dry and tart drink, perhaps too sour for some, and lacking in sweetness that would help to balance out its elements.
Those who have subsequently come out against the Aviation point to this lack of balance, among other things. Some drinkers just don’t like Crème de Violette, period, saying that it tastes to them like soap or old perfume. There’s also no shortage of drinkers out there who don’t care for the common Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur, so there’s a good chance that if you dislike the likes of the Last Word cocktail, this one probably won’t be for you either.
Then there’s the elephant in the room, which is the drink’s color. That famous blue-purple hue undoubtedly was one of the elements that attracted curious cocktail neophytes to the drink circa 2009, but it’s also something that turns some of those same people off in this day and age. There’s an Instagram-friendliness to the drink that can make it seem unserious, which perhaps feeds into the perception that the cocktail never deserved to recapture peoples’ attention, that it only became popular due to its novel appearance. This is not helped by the fact that some bars will add more coloration to the drink to really make that blue or purple pop, because in truth something like the common Rothman & Winter Crème de Violette doesn’t contribute that intense a color on its own, especially when used in small quantities.
But with all that said … I do think that there’s a worthy drink, or the outline of a worthy drink, that exists here at the end of the day. With that said, I think this is a drink that may require some trial and error on the part of the person making it, to zero in on what exactly they like or dislike in its flavor profile. Some may want literally just that barspoon of Crème de Violette. I’ve seen others up the amount of maraschino liqueur, or the lemon juice, or even reduce the amount of gin. The biggest change to the classic recipe that I won’t hesitate to advocate for is adding some simple syrup–this is a very dry drink in its original 1916 version, and a small amount of rich simple syrup can go a very long way in rounding out the sharpness of the lemon juice while helping nudge its other flavors to the foreground. So with that said, here is a baseline version of a suggested Aviation cocktail.
— 2 oz gin
— .5 oz lemon juice
— .25 oz Crème de Violette
— .25 oz maraschino liqueur
— .25 oz rich (2:1) simple syrup
Combine all ingredients in a drink mixer with ice, but unlike most any other drink with citrus in it, try stirring the drink gently instead of shaking it. Stirring the Aviation rather than shaking helps to preserve the color of the Crème de Violette rather than clouding it up with ice particles, and I believe the fuller, smoother texture of stirring may also be superior here to the greater amount of aeration and froth you’d get from shaking it. These rules of thumb are meant to be broken, right? Garnish with the traditional addition of a maraschino cherry, and potentially with lemon twist.
And you know what: After trying this variation on the Aviation for myself, I really do think it’s superior to just about any version I’ve had before. The addition of the simple syrup does a lot of work in bringing its other elements into harmony with each other, while the choice to stir rather than shake–couple with that syrup–creates a fuller body and silkier texture that acts as a bridge for those delicate floral and nutty flavors to reach you. Stirring also just results in a more pleasing cocktail to look at, thanks to the greater clarity and less muddy, grayed-out colors. It’s an all-around win.
With that said, I’m not convinced that the evolution of the Aviation needs to end there. I’ve seen so many other suggestions over time that could continue pushing the drink into more novel territory, often involving layering in other herbal influences such as Benedictine or cocktail bitters. I’ve even seen some people talk about adding in Yellow Chartreuse, which would push the drink a bit closer to Last Word territory … but is that really such a bad thing? The Aviation may be a drink that was revived from the era before Prohibition, but luckily we don’t need to leave it there, suspended in history. The original version just … wasn’t quite perfected for everyone, let’s say. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get there, or that we shouldn’t try. We may eventually get to Ship of Theseus territory, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near there yet, not when you can make quality tweaks by just adding a bit more sweetness and changing the texture. Cocktails exist to get better, and I think people who have sworn off the Aviation may want to give this version a try.
Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident beer and liquor geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more drink writing.