Tuesday, October 1, 2013

All the Colors Are Changing: Nocino Sour

It’s starting to feel like fall in San Francisco. The afternoon air seems clearer, sharper—the sky a more tender blue. In the spirit of autumn, I reached for the nocino, an elegant walnut liqueur, and then had to admit I couldn’t think of anything to put it in. Nut liqueurs are very tasty but seem like late-night knockout drops. Luckily, I remembered Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s Amaretto Sour, the perfect squirrel potation for any time of day, and substituted the main ingredient.

cocktail

Nocino Sour
  • 1 1/2 oz Nocino della Cristina (Monteverdi)
  • 
3/4 oz cask-strength bourbon (Noah’s Mill)

  • 1 oz lemon juice

  • 1 tsp simple syrup, 2:1
  • 1/2 oz egg white, beaten
Dry shake ingredients to combine, then shake well with cracked ice. Strain over fresh ice into an old fashioned. Cherry.
ADAPTED FROM JEFFREY MORGENTHALER’S AMARETTO SOUR

This is what I was looking for. The walnut and bourbon together suggest maple syrup and falling leaves. The lemon balances the sweetness, also kept understated by the bourbon. Interestingly, the Nocino Sour recipes you see around the web call for gin, and I’m game, but the bourbon is so delicious here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.