How to Make the Gin and Aperol Cocktail

“America received its official invitation to flirt this week,” reads the press release, “with the arrival of Aperol, Italy’s most popular light spirit. At last, after nearly 100 years, the social drink of Italy has arrived.”

This letter is dated March 21, 2006, and its purpose was to introduce America to the newly available liqueur Aperol, something that you can tell by the language that the PR people who wrote it were struggling to figure out how to do (see: “invitation to flirt”).

Of course now, in the comfort of modernity, the whole idea seems absurd. Aperol—the vivid orange bittersweet liqueur, irreplaceable in neo-classics like the Naked & Famous and the Paper Plane—needs no introduction. It is a core bottle, absolutely necessary for cocktail work, and if you walk into any good bar in the world, be it in Raleigh or Reno or Reykjavik, you’ll almost certainly find it. Which is what makes the press release seem like such a time capsule, because in a world without those famous drinks, how would you introduce the flavors of Aperol?

The answer, obviously, is to ask a bartender like Audrey Saunders. When Saunders, owner of legendary Pegu Club in New York, first tasted Aperol shortly after its release, she recognized the potential of this lurid Italian liqueur, and set to work inventing a liquid vehicle to introduce it to her guests. As it was designed to be a feature of the liqueur, she used a full two ounces of it, creating what she called an “inverted drink,” using the modifier as the base spirit and a traditional base spirit (gin, in this case) as a modifier. To this she added lemon, to balance the sweetness, and a hit Angostura Bitters to shade in the exuberance of the citrus.

Saunders called the cocktail Intro to Aperol, which is admittedly the kind of thing a Vulcan would name it, but has at least the benefit of description because that’s precisely what it is—the Intro to Aperol is a true showcase of the flavor and character of the liqueur. It starts with the lemon and then the midpalate blossoms into Aperol’s full juicy orange and rhubarb, which fades into Aperol’s more bitter herbal notes on the finish, ending with the baking spices of the Angostura Bitters and a dry lemon zing.

People don’t talk much about the Intro to Aperol anymore, not when the following decade brought the Aperol Spritz, which is all the introduction most people need. Still, the two drinks serve very different moods. The Spritz, like most Aperol drinks, lean heavily into its summery qualities and try to hide the bitterness under the rug. The Intro to Aperol, by contrast, embraces the full spectrum of Aperol’s flavor including its other side, the more textured, bitter, and spice-friendly side, one more suited to the early days of fall, when the that exuberant sunshine begins to take on a chilly edge.

Intro to Aperol

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake good and hard for eight to 10 seconds. Strain up into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon peel.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Aperol: Accept no substitutes. I truly have no idea if this will work with Aperol’s many competitors, like Select or Cappalletti. It would be at minimum interesting, but, as with Aperol’s big brother Campari, my suspicion is that it’s not an accident that Aperol has risen to the top of a crowded field. There are some products that just translate to mixed drinks better than others.

See Also

Michter’s Rarest Whiskey, the Celebration Sour Mash, Has Returned

Gin: Saunders specifically called for Beefeater Gin, and even though the goons who make it reduced its proof twice (!), from 47 percent back then down to 44 percent and now to 40, it’s still the right choice here.

Simple Syrup: The original recipe called for a quarter ounce of simple syrup, which I personally think is an artifact of tastes generally being sweeter 20 years ago than they are today. I’d skip it.