Cherry Amore

We just got a bottle of Don Ciccio & Figli’s newest release, Cerasum Aperitivo, and we are really enjoying working it into cocktails. This aperitivo comes from an Italian recipe that includes an infusion of cherries, sakura blossoms, roots and herbs. Don Ciccio & Figli is a craft distillery located here in Washington, DC (with roots in the Amalfi Coast), and Cerasum is their nod to DC’s Cherry Blossom Festival.

Since one member of the Cocktail Artist partnership has roots in Michigan, we were happy to learn that Michigan cherries were used to create this aperitivo. If you follow our blog you may have noticed that we spend time in Northern Michigan in the summer, and that we are big fans of Michigan’s Traverse City Whiskey Co. Take a look at our posts for the Cherry Capital Old Fashioned, the Grand Mariner, and the Up North Raspberryand Rye to see how we’ve used Traverse City Whiskey’s bourbon and rye (and to check out some of the Cocktail Artist’s watercolors done in his Northern Michigan studio). So, when it came to mixing up a cocktail with a spirit that uses Michigan cherries, we (naturally) decided that Traverse City Whiskey should be included.

Cerasum Aperitivo walks the line between bitter and sweet – it's not purely bitter (like Campari). It also has a beautiful dark ruby color. You clearly get the cherry notes, but it’s much more complex than a cherry liqueur. Using it as a replacement for Campari in a Boulevardier seemed like the obvious way to go, and we weren’t disappointed with results. A Boulevardier is a whiskey-based version of the Negroni, but we've always thought of it more as a bitter version of a Manhattan.

 As is typical of us, we experiment with the proportions and deviated from our standard Boulevardier recipe. To elevate the cherry in our cocktail, we added a bit of Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur, a dash of cherry bitters, and then garnished with a Traverse City Whiskey Co. Cocktail Cherry. By the way, if you haven’t tried the cocktail cherries from Traverse City Whiskey Co. you are really missing something (they're now available on Amazon - so you can get them delivered to your door!)

It’s hard enough coming up with solid cocktail recipes and creating original artwork to pair with them, but sometimes our biggest challenge is giving the cocktail the right name. We know we’re not alone in our struggle – the cocktail community on Instagram (aka drinkstagram) regularly laments over this. For this cocktail, though, the name came to us pretty quickly thanks to Stevie Wonder’s 1969 song – “My Cherie Amour”.  In the first line he sings “…lovely as a summer day…” – and that’s exactly how we feel about this cocktail.

The Artist has been out painting the cherry blossoms – which started to appear in DC a couple of weeks ago (before being stunted by a spring snowfall). We’ve paired the Cherry Amore cocktail with a couple of cherry blossom watercolors and have tossed in a painting from summertime on our favorite Lake Michigan beach.

Cheers!


Cherry Amore

2 ounces Rye (Traverse City Whiskey Co North Coast Rye)
1 ounce Cerasum Aperitivo (Don Ciccio & Figli)
½ ounce Sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica Formula)
1 teaspoon Maraschino Liqueur (Luxardo)
1 dash Spiced cherry bitters (Woodford Reserve Spiced Cherry Bitters)

Pour all ingredients into a mixing pitcher with ice cubes and stir until chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry (Traverse City Whiskey Co. Premium Cocktail Cherry).

Cherry Amore cocktail and the ingredients


Cherry Blossoms study no. 1 - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist


Cherry Blossoms study no. 2 - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist


View of Lake Michigan - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Call

Image
This post is a week late, but this blog is our hobby (not our real job) so we’re not going to worry about it. Anyhow, we came up with this drink for Mardi Gras as the “last call” before the beginning of Lent – a time when some of us stop drinking for 40 days (we’ll let you know how that works out). The name “Last Call” also references the classic “Last Word” cocktail. The Last Word is really a perfect cocktail. It’s equal parts of four ingredients (gin, Green Chartreuse, Maraschino Liqueur, and lime) and a superb balance of tart, herbal, and sweet. It’s one of our fallback cocktails – one that we mix up when we can’t make up our mind about what we want to drink.  Another classic that we regularly enjoy is the Aviation Cocktail. The Aviation is another gin cocktail and is one of the few that uses Crème de Violette – a sweet, floral liqueur that is typically a deep purple hue. It takes mixing quite a few Aviations to go through a bottle of Crème de Violette, so it’s prob...
Read more

Lemon Bergamot Gimlet

Image
In case you don’t know us personally, or haven’t read the bio on our blog , you may not realize the “The Cocktail Artist” is really a partnership between two architects (who also happen to be married to each other). One of us comes up with the recipes, does the photography, and writes the blog posts – the other one creates all of the original artwork and offers opinions on the cocktail recipes. Being architects, we sometimes let our design-sense get the better of us – meaning we have been known to purchase a bottle of booze because we like the design of the bottle.  Occasionally this backfires, but rest assured (with some creative mixology or a bit of barrel-aging) we have always been able to make use of the contents of those impulse-buy bottles. Right now, two of the most attractive bottles in our liquor cabinet contain Italian spirits – Malfy Gin Con Limone and Italicus . Italy has always been a design trendsetter, so it’s not surprising that these bottles stand out...
Read more

Amalfi Martini

Image
Darn! Why didn’t we buy those airline tickets to Italy when they were cheap? It would be so nice to be lounging in a beautiful Italian seaside town right now.  The Amalfi region, on Italy's west coast, is known for it's production of lemon liqueur and fine writing and art paper - sounds like the perfect place for us! Oh well, maybe it would be better to be there during the off season. Italy is probably packed with American tourists right now. Let's  just pull out the watercolor paints and the cocktail shaker and bring a bit of la dolce vita  to our patio. Our Amalfi Martini (naturally) features limoncello. It's a fairly low-alcohol liqueur, so we boost the proof of this cocktail by adding our vodka of choice - District Made Vodka by One Eight Distilling. If you are using a vodka that doesn't have much flavor on it's own (which, honestly, is most vodka) you may want to add a couple dashes of citrus bitters to this recipe. This just wouldn't be an Ita...
Read more

Cherry Capital Old Fashioned

Image
Cherry Capital Old Fashioned - original watercolor painting by The Cocktail Artist If you've read some of our previous posts (such as the Up North Raspberry and Rye or the Grand Mariner Cocktail) you know that we're fans of the bourbon and rye produced by The Traverse City Whiskey Co . Traverse City, Michigan is known as the "Cherry Capital" for being the area with the largest production of tart cherries in the United States. In Traverse City, you will find wonderful freshwater beaches, lots of summer tourists, and (of course) cherries! You can attend the Cherry Festival in July, go to the Cherryland Mall, and fly into Cherry Capital airport. So the folks at Traverse City Whiskey (naturally) produce an American Cherry Edition of their bourbon. Here in the Nation's Capital we were lucky enough to find this cherry bourbon at our local liquor store. It's a nice bourbon for sipping neat, but during #OldFashionedOctober we also tried it in an Old Fashioned and...
Read more

Douglas Fir Martini

Image
This was one of our very early blog posts. Now that the holiday season is here it seems like a good time to revisit it. Our cocktail recipe remains unchanged, but we wanted to add some information about the ingredients and include a bit more artwork. This martini, with it’s pine forest aroma, is our antidote to holiday stress. Mix up a couple of these to help you through your decorating, gift-wrapping, etc… Doesn’t enjoying a cocktail while you relax in front of the fireplace sound much nicer than struggling to get the Christmas tree in the stand? Along with The Cocktail  Artist's watercolors maybe we can give you the feeling you're walking through a pine forest instead of stressing out over some holiday preparations. At the heart of this cocktail is Clear Creek Distillery’s Douglas Fir Brandy . We discovered this unusual liqueur in our local liquor store a couple of years ago and just couldn’t resist giving it a try. Clear Creek calls it “a tree in a bottle”. It's m...
Read more