Aviation Cocktail

Aviation Cocktail Story

The original Aviation was a crisp gin sour, flecked with the blue haze of a sunny sky. Hugo R. Ensslin created the drink at New York’s Wallick hotel in 1916, at a time when both cocktails and luxury air travel were enjoying somewhat of a golden age. Its crucial ingredient, and also what lent the drink its mesmerizing color, was crème de violette, a French liqueur that fell into obscurity stateside as Europe plunged into conflict. Subsequent recipes, like the one found in the Savoy Cocktail Book, omitted the violette altogether. An Aviation without violette was simply a sour made with Maraschino liqueur, hardly exciting and certainly inelegant. Thanks to the current revival of lost spirits, the production of violette has widely expanded. Bartenders can now replicate not only the Aviation according to the original recipe, but a whole slew of other forgotten violette cocktails such as the Arsenic and Old Lace.