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(621)
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
621 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!

PADR

As a fan of amari, grapefruit and gin, I had to try this. Usually, Rebekah Pepler delivers, but using Amaro Nonino did not work here; the gin overwhelmed it. The proportions probably need to be adapted depending on what amaro you use: for Cynar, as some other commenters have suggested, a 2:1 ratio of gin to amaro sounds promising, but for Nonino, next time I would try reversing it (two oz. amaro, one oz. gin). Nevertheless, worthwhile template if you like tinkering!

Vicki

I routinely make grapefruit simple syrup and keep it in the fridge for drinks. It worked quite well in this drink, substituting for the grapefruit wheel and sugar. I used a bit of added fresh grapefruit juice. If I made this a lot, I would add the grapefruit juice while making the simple syrup. For sure, a 5-star drink!

Liz S.

Works wonderfully with a mandarin, too, and with an extra bit of lemon and Luxardo syrup!

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