In this French 75 variation, chef Dominick Lee pays homage to réveillon’s roots, combining French cognac and Champagne with a Creole twist: cinnamon-infused elderflower liqueur. To make it, simply submerge a cinnamon stick in a full 750-­milliliter bottle of St-Germain and set aside for at least 48 hours. Lee recommends topping the cocktail with real-deal brut Champagne—it is a celebration, after all.

Featured in “In Montreal and New Orleans, A French Holiday Celebration Endures” by Chantal Martineau and Kayla Stewart in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue. See more recipes and stories from Issue 205.

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A unique class of Italian liqueurs, amari are the ultimate all-in-one spirits. Carefully concocted from wild herbs, roots, and flowers, the best contain all the depth of flavor and complexity of a craft cocktail while their alcohol content makes them smooth sippers. Their medicinal aspects are most pronounced when served neat, though a splash of seltzer or an ice cube or two is never a bad decision. Italians have been making these aperitivi and digestivi for centuries, slowly perfecting the craft with the patience of a monk on a mountaintop (which is actually how many of them are traditionally made).

So while the average overly ambitious person might not produce a sublime, retailable amaro on the first try, that didn’t stop me from wanting to make a go of it. To start, I turned to Sother Teague, the barman behind New York City’s Amor y Amargo, a tasting room devoted to the craft of bitters. “The exciting (and frustrating) thing about amari,” he told me, “is there really aren’t any rules. ‘Bittersweet liqueur’ is the basic definition, and from there, anything goes.”

Bitter and sweet. It’s a start. But the final product is infinitely complex, and most recipes remain a secret: One of my favorites, Bràulio, from Valtellina in the Italian Alps, uses gentian root as its bittering agent and gets its deep brown color from years spent aging in oak barrels. A blend of herbs gathered from the alpine hills fills in the gaps between recognizable flavor bursts of spearmint, juniper, and chamomile. Even Campari, perhaps the most well-known of the Italian amari family, keeps its ingredient list behind lock and key, alluding only to an infusion of “herbs, aromatic plants, and fruit.” And it’s not just the Italians; the French have their bitter amers, and the Germans have their slightly sweeter kräuterlikör, the recipes of which all remain equally elusive.

Let’s start with bitter. “Gentian root and cinchona bark are the workhorses when it comes to bittering agents,” Brad Thomas Parsons, author of Amaro, told me the other day as I started plotting my grocery list. Gentian root contains many bitter compounds that release easily into alcohol, but most notable is amarogentin, supposedly the most bitter-tasting compound of all. “Bitterness can also come from other ingredients like wormwood, licorice root, and even tea leaves,” Parsons adds; the complete list in his book goes on to include burdock root, angelica root, cherry tree bark, fringe tree bark, and quassia bark—all ingredients high in bitter compounds. 

With the bitter accounted for, the rest of the ingredients start to feel like a free-for-all. “There’s a Wild West element to making amaro,” Parsons told me, “but there are some category profiles to consider.” When he creates an amaro, he avoids using commercially available products as models: “Most Italian producers have a headstart by a century or two,” he said, “so I’m not necessarily interested in making a clone of an existing amaro, but instead creating something driven by the season, occasion, or spotlighting local ingredients.”

Most amari were the result of foraging ingredients from the surrounding landscape, and therefore came to represent the flavors of their respective locations. Danny Childs, in his book Slow Drinks, tried to recreate an alpine-style amaro using plant parts scavenged from his home state of New Jersey in the wintertime—pine needles, juniper branches, birch bark, and horehound sprigs, to name a few.

The real magic of amaro, it seems, is that it doesn’t really matter so long as the plants are edible and the flavors appeal; a variety of contrasting and complementary elements will ultimately result in something complex and intriguing. It’s also worth noting that certain ingredients can seem appealing but should be avoided due to their latent toxicity. It’s best to start with a recipe, or at least do some research beforehand.

For my first foray, I used Parsons’ “Rite of Spring Amaro” as a loose guide. I visited Flower Power, an herbalist shop in Manhattan that stocks food-grade botanicals, and stocked up on angelica root, elderflower, licorice root, dried hops, calendula petals, hyssop, cardamom pods, lemongrass, and dried artichoke leaf. I also gathered some citrus peels, anise seed, fresh sage, fresh mint, and a few hoja santa leaves that were lying around the SAVEUR test kitchen.

I muddled a small heap of each of them together with a mortar and pestle, breaking down the fibers of the leaves and the citrus peels, and incorporating them all before putting the mixture in a giant lidded mason jar and covering it with Spirytus Rektyfikowany, a Polish rectified spirit not unlike Everclear that clocks in at 96 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). And then I covered it with a kitchen towel and put it under my desk for five weeks.

By the time I uncovered it, the mixture had turned a cloudy olive green color, and when I removed the lid, I was reminded of the sheer amount of alcohol present in it; at first it smelled like paint thinner, but then it opened up into a perfume of grapefruit peels, then a warm, herbaceous aroma of freshly cut summer lawns. In hindsight, I was perhaps a bit overzealous with the alcohol—I learned that a neutral spirit between 50 and 75 percent ABV will do just fine and will result in a final product that requires less dilution to taste nice. But my infusion was a whopping 192-proof, and the lightest drop on your tongue came with a burning sensation and an intense bitter sting. This is where the sweet part of ‘bittersweet liqueur’ comes in.

After the infusion is strained through a cheesecloth over a fine-mesh strainer (and strained again, then again once more), the sweetening stage is when you get to balance the bitterness of the liqueur you’ve prepared, and when you can bring your undrinkable hooch down to a palatable ABV. Kate O’Connor Morris, an experienced home amaro maker, says 30 percent ABV is her sweet spot. “30 percent gets you a smooth, non-burning sipping bitter that can also shine through when mixed with other ingredients into a cocktail,” she told me.

Frankly, I was worried I’d ruin it. With some slightly complicated math I hadn’t used since high school, I figured I’d need to mix my amaro with around twice its volume in simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar) to get it even close to the 30-ish percent range. I imagined a treacle-y sweet schnapps-like concoction that would have defeated the whole purpose of waiting a month for something meant to be intentionally bitter. So I experimented again, using a syrup made from a higher ratio of water to sugar, taste testing with every addition until I felt it didn’t need to be any sweeter. The alcohol content got progressively weaker as the mixing went on, but I still consumed enough that I’m slightly unsure of my math at the end there. (I think I got it to about 33 percent?) Everyone in the office had a sip and mostly the reaction was, “This is…actually really good?” I was giddy with success (and maybe a little drunk).

Poured over ice, it was the best I could have imagined it being. It tasted like it smelled: citrusy, herbaceous, and assertively bitter, with only the slightest sugary-sweet aftertaste. It certainly wasn’t Bràulio—it lacked the precision of flavor and the toasty vanilla notes from barrel-aging—but it was good, and far greater than the sum of its parts. If you’d like to make your own amaro, here’s a choose-your-own-adventure guide to help you get started. Or, you can trust the professionals and follow a recipe. But isn’t experimenting half the fun?

How to Make Your Own Amaro

Making your own amaro can be divided into five basic elements: the spirit, the bitter ingredients, the dried ingredients, the fresh ingredients, and the sweeteners used at the very end.

1. Spirit: Start with any overproof clear spirit that strikes your fancy (think vodka, rum, or Everclear), but try and keep it neutral so the flavors you choose can develop fully and shine through on their own. Around 75 percent ABV (or 150 proof) is ideal, but don’t go below 50 percent ABV, or the alcohol won’t absorb the flavors as well.

2. Bitter: Arguably the most important component, the bitter provides the backbone of the finished product. Choose one or two bittering agents to add to the infusion—like cherry tree bark, cinchona bark, wormwood, licorice root, angelica root, or gentian root—and use about one tablespoon per 750mL of spirit.

3. Dried: The dried ingredients lend depth and complexity to amaro and allow for a more diverse flavor experience than you can get with fresh ingredients alone (unless, of course, you happen to live on an alpine hillside). Use about one teaspoon each of 5–10 edible dried components as it appeals to you, like lemongrass, anise seeds, cardamom, juniper cranberries, hyssop, or elderflower.

4. Fresh: The liveliness of fresh herbs adds top layers of brightness to amaro, but use them sparingly as fresh ingredients like citrus peels can easily become overpowering. Use a handful of fresh mint, sage, or rosemary and a few strips of orange, grapefruit, or lemon zest.

5. Sweet: Once everything gets muddled together and infuses for several weeks, the inedible alcohol infusion needs to be diluted and sweetened to taste. Simple syrup is a classic, but for more depth of flavor, you can make a demerara syrup or dilute honey or maple syrup with fresh water before stirring into your filtered amaro.

Recipe: Alpine-Style Winter Amaro

Get the recipe >

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The category of alpine amaro is notoriously loose—defined only by the inclusion of “alpine herbs” and a bright, piney flavor profile. That ambiguity became the inspiration to reimagine the style by drawing on winter-hardy herbs from my garden (many of which can be found in the Alps) as well as foraged evergreens, birch, and sumac from New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. The result is a conifer-forward, deeply aromatic amaro that tastes like a cold walk through the forest. To go the extra mile, you can add the strained liquid to a 3-quart oak barrel and allow it to age for an additional month (or longer), which will impart the classic flavor notes of vanilla and spice. Enjoy this bold digestivo on its own or add it into your cocktails for a welcome bit of woodsy complexity.

Featured in “How to Make a Perfectly Balanced, Complex Amaro at Home” by Alex Testere.

Excerpted with permission from Slow Drinks by Danny Childs, published by ‎Hardie Grant North America, October 2023.

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Cynar’s pleasant vegetal bitterness, derived primarily from artichokes, pairs nicely with the fresh mint and grapefruit soda in this lower-proof, herbaceous julep variation. This recipe is adapted from bartender Renato “Tato” Giovannoni of Florería Atlántico in Buenos Aires.

Featured in “Amari” by Camper English in the January/February 2014 issue.

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The brandy crusta is a local New Orleans cocktail invented by bartender Joseph Santini, who worked at the St. Louis Hotel in the 1840s. The drink became a cult favorite after Jerry Thomas, the first bartender to publish a cocktail book, put it in his seminal 1862 guide. “What is notable about this drink is the introduction of lemon juice,” writes Neal Bodenheimer, founder of New Orleans bar Cure and author of a book by the same name, Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em. “This was not common practice at the time, and it set the stage for other delicious, important drinks like the sidecar and the daisy (an inspiration for the margarita).”

For a horse’s neck lemon twist (named for its resemblance to the curves of a horse’s neck), Bodenheimer recommends using a Y peeler to cut away the entire peel of the citrus in one long spiral. Then, coil it along the interior of your serving glass, drape the top over the rim if desired, and voilà—a perfectly elegant garnish for your cocktail.

Adapted from Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em by Neal Bodenheimer and Emily Timberlake, Published by Abrams. Photography © 2022 by Denny Culbert.

Featured in: “10 Essential New Orleans Cocktail Recipes.”

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This classic vieux carré recipe comes from Hotel Monteleone’s rotating Carousel Bar in New Orleans, where the drink was created. The cocktail’s name, which means “old square” in French, is a nod to the French Quarter.

Where to Drink in New Orleans Right Now

Commander’s Palace Sazerac

Brandy Crusta

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Making Louisiana’s official state cocktail like a seasoned New Orleans bartender is easier than you think. This recipe from Commander’s Palace calls for absinthe, but if you can’t find it, substitute another anisette such as Herbsaint or pastis.

Where to Drink in New Orleans Right Now

Brandy Crusta

Hotel Monteleone’s Vieux Carré

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Based on a cocktail popular in Prohibition-era gin joints, the Paper Plane belongs to the family of corpse revivers, created in the 19th century as hangover cures. In this version by Tenmile Distillery, Little Rest American Single Malt Whisky, stands in for the usual bourbon.

Featured in “Our New Favorite Single Malt Whisky Comes From … New York?” by Shane Mitchell.

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The pisco sour was one of the first drinks to be codified during the “Golden Age of Cocktails.” In fact, the recipe emerged as a result of a confluence of factors far from the South American spirit’s birthplace. 

California boasts a history of wine and brandy production dating back to the 17th century, as well as a deep connection to South and Central American territories once controlled by the Spanish Crown. Gold Rush era San Francisco was a hotbed for cocktail culture, by virtue of the glut of unattached men looking for ways to distract themselves from their arduous work in the mining industry. While the Conquistadors invested in California wine production, spirit distillation was much less widespread; for local high rollers who wished to imbibe, high-quality options were slim. 

Pisco—a grape-based distillate whose origins are a topic of debate between Peru and Chile—was suited perfectly to the late 19th century’s emerging “fancy drinks” trend. At turns aromatic and dry, the spirit pairs nicely with various fruits and acids, and was a natural choice for the era’s elevated serves. San Francisco’s Bank Exchange and Billiard Saloon popularized pisco in the 1880s by mixing it with pineapple, lime, and syrup for the enormously popular pisco punch, inspiring imitators throughout the city. Then in the 1920s, the South American liquor garnered its international fame when Victor Vaughn Morris, an American bar owner who’d immigrated to Lima, began serving a pisco-based riff on the whisky sour.  Made luxuriously silky via the addition of egg white (like the Ramos gin fizz popularized in New Orleans shortly before), and highly aromatic courtesy of Angostura bitters, a drink this good is virtually impossible to improve upon, which explains why the recipe hasn’t changed in over a century.

*Note: It is important to point out that Chilean pisco is generally more floral, while Peruvian versions can display more earthy and vegetal notes which I find more suitable for cocktailing. There are four broad styles of Peruvian Pisco: Puro, Aromatico, Acholado, and Mosto Verde. I prefer Acholado for its drier profile, while others may prefer the sweetness of Mosto Verde. The brands Barsol, Porton, and Macchu Pisco will all work nicely in this recipe.

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I developed the Wise Guy last holiday season and since then it has become one of my go-to winter drinks. Spicy, bold, and aromatic, the spiced coffee old fashioned is smooth enough to sip at a slow pace, so go with a “bottled in bond” rye or a premium, high-proof rum. Flavored with allspice, cinnamon, and clove, pimento liqueur (aka allspice dram) was a popular ingredient in 18th century punches. The best examples are those based on pot-still Jamaica rum, such as Hamilton Pimento Liqueur.

Featured in: “How to Add Coffee to Your Cocktails.”

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To wine drinkers, the South of France evokes pale rosé and coarse red blends, but for me no drink is more emblematic to that sunny Medeterranean coast than the herb-tinged anisette called pastis. Redolent of the oily, almost numbing flavor of anise, pastis is something of an acquired taste, though the effect is more subdued when it’s properly served: Poured over ice and diluted to taste with an accompanying pitcher of water. When enjoyed this way, the intensely extracted spirit transforms into a refreshing long drink perfect for passing the summer hours away. 

Technically an aperitif, a glass of pastis will certainly awaken your appetite if it’s doing its job. And while you might think that such a distinctive drink would clash with food, its potency is actually the spirit’s strength. Pastis stands up to pungent ingredients like garlic, spice, and fat, taming those punchy flavors without overpowering. Its gentle herbal notes are a natural complement to the earthy sweetness of seafood—particularly shellfish.

Marseille native Paul Ricard originally developed pastis in 1932—in fact, the word “pastis” didn’t even exist until Ricard named his dupe after a portmanteau of the Provencal “pastisson” and Italian “pasticcio,” both meaning “mixture.” The spirit was initially intended to replace absinthe, the overconsumption of which had been blamed for the decline of early 20th century French society. While his recipe was similar to other drinks developed at the time (including Parisian Pernod), Ricard’s Marseillais brand quickly rose the ranks to become the preferred French anisette, inspiring a plethora of local imitators and establishing the category as a cornerstone of the convivial Southern French lifestyle. Today there are a handful of pastis brands widely distributed in the U.S., including the original Ricard, Pastis 51, and Henri Bardouin, all differing somewhat in composition, but always showcasing a similar base blend of star anise, anise seed, and liquorice root.

Even if you don’t like sipping the stuff, the intensity of undiluted pastis makes it a handy kitchen staple. Its sweet perfume can complement or mimic herbal notes like tarragon, basil, and fennel. A shot or two is de rigueur in traditional bouillabaisse, and pastis can even uplift braised chicken or rabbit. In a pinch, it stands in nicely for fresh tarragon in a quick oyster mignonette. 

Get the recipe for Mussels Rockefeller »

Although pastis contains less sugar than many other liqueurs, the overall impression is still quite sweet from sweet-tasting compounds (anethole and glycyrrhizin) in the aromatics. This balance makes it especially well-suited to savory recipes. Exact formulae are typically kept under wraps, but are said to include other herbs and spices, among them rosemary, thyme, angelica root, and nutmeg. In comparison, anisettes from elsewhere—think sambuca, arak, and raki—are typically made with only a single spice (usually either star anise or anise seed). These simple liqueurs can be used for cooking as well, though their sugar levels can vary widely, so don’t assume a one-to-one substitution. Absinthe, too, works nicely in the kitchen; its higher alcohol content provides an even more concentrated flavor, but certain blends are far more bitter than others, so add this spirit slowly, and to taste.

Pastis plays beautifully with all sorts of seafood dishes, but I find that it truly harmonizes the elements in broiled oysters Rockefeller. Typically topped with a compound butter flavored with spinach, garlic, and herbs, I prefer to add that herbaceous note with a splash of pastis instead. (Think of this like using vanilla extract instead of whole vanilla bean; the flavor in the spirit combines more subtly than the raw ingredient.) The addition makes hot shellfish taste more like the sea, rounding out their vegetal and earthy flavors with a slight sweetness, the alcohol intensifying the overall aroma of the dish. 

Sourcing and shucking fresh oysters isn’t something I normally make the time for, but I like to use this pastis-spiked Rockefeller butter on other seafood dishes as well. It’s great on broiled fish for an easy weeknight dinner, and for a low-stress-but-still-fancy starter, you could do worse than fresh mussels: Simply steam their shells open in white wine, split, and slather the meaty bivalves with the heady anisette butter. To gild the lily, I sprinkle on a little extra pastis before broiling the mussels until they sizzle, then serve them hot, on the half shell and with enough bread to soak up any extra juices.

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