Amaro Sour

By Rebekah Peppler

Published March 24, 2021

Amaro Sour
Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Chris Lanier.
Total Time
5 minutes
Rating
4(585)
Comments
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This drink, run through with amaro, riffs on the endlessly adaptable sour template (spirit-citrus-sweetener). A maraschino cherry and half a grapefruit wheel are muddled with sugar early on, to sweeten and flavor the drink, while another cherry and half-wheel are added just before serving. That allows the fruit to slowly become infused with gin and amaro, creating garnish and boozy snack. Reach for a sweeter-leaning amaro, or throw caution to the bitter wind and grab something more intense. If you want to balance the amaro’s bitter edges with a touch more sweetness, add a dash or three of the maraschino cherry syrup to your shaker or serve with extra cherries for middrink pops of sweetness.

Featured in: Sours That Walk the Line

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Ingredients

Yield:1 drink
  • 2maraschino cherries
  • 1grapefruit wheel, halved
  • 1½teaspoons granulated sugar
  • 2ounces gin
  • 1ounce amaro, such as Amaro Nonino, Montenegro or Averna
  • ¾ounce fresh lemon juice
  • Ice
Ingredient Substitution Guide

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    In a cocktail shaker, add 1 cherry, 1 half-wheel of grapefruit and the sugar. Muddle until the sugar dissolves. Add the gin, amaro, lemon juice and ice. Cover and shake vigorously until well chilled, about 15 seconds. Strain into an ice-filled lowball glass, and garnish with the remaining cherry and grapefruit half.

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Ratings

4 out of 5
585 user ratings
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Comments

JP

You aren't muddling the sugar, you are muddling the fruit. The process releases the flavors of the fresh ingredients (in this case grapefruit and cherry) so that they bind with the alcohol. I'm uncertain what you are referring to with regards to the 1/2 grapefruit wheel being from the "middle of the fruit." Either way, this process/recipe is pretty standard, not really odd at all.

Pete

No sour grapes(fruit) here! I had lemons and oranges, followed the proportions exactly, and holy saint Juniper, this drink is so good!

delicious

Didn’t have grapefruit but blood orange was a great substitute!

Vee

Would this work with Campari as a substitute for Amaro?

erica

Sounds great! Best subs for gin? Asking for a gin hater…

Michael

Two shots of gin makes this drink lethal, so unless you want to drink like a college student, try one shot.

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