The Dry Aviation Cocktail Recipe: A Floral Gin Cocktail

Dry
The Dry Aviation Cocktail Recipe: A Floral Gin Cocktail
A spirit-focused drink, with hints of citrus, sweet, and floral.

I recently flew to San Francisco and back in the span of four days, and chose to celebrate the many hours of air travel with what I call a “dry aviation” — the normal cocktail contains a half ounce each of maraschino and lemon juice, and a quarter ounce of creme de violette. I’ve dropped that to a scant quarter ounce of the first two ingredients, and a barspoon of the latter, without decreasing the gin.

This makes for a much more spirit-focused drink, with hints of citrus, sweet, and floral. Frankly, I like it better than a regular aviation, which is a little too sweet-n-sour for my taste. If you don’t like your drinks so spirit-forward, then a regular aviation is probably more your style. Don’t sleep on the crème de violette, though! It elevates what is effectively a gin sour into something much more interesting.

I’m not including them in the recipe, since a traditional Aviation doesn’t call for them, but I also added a few drops of my Asian citrus bitters, and they worked quite nicely.

This article is a modified and enhanced version of a post that ran on my nightly cocktail blog, DrinkShouts.

dry aviation cocktail recipe

The Dry Aviation Cocktail Recipe

A floral Gin cocktail
Total Time 5 minutes
Course Drinks
Servings 1 Drink

Equipment

Ingredients
  

Instructions
 

  • Combine ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake thoroughly. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with a Luxardo maraschino cherry.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Christopher Buecheler

Christopher Buecheler is a novelist, a web developer, an award-winning amateur mixologist, a brewer, a guitarist, a drummer, and an NBA enthusiast. He lives a semi-nomadic life with his wife and two cats, currently residing in Providence, RI. You can learn more at his website, cwbuecheler.com.