Here’s a guest post from our good friend, Lonnie. Lonnie found herself without one of her favorite ingredients running low. After some experimenting, she was able to replace it with a homemade version. Being creative and mixing you own mixers is just one more way of optimizing your home mixology skills during the lockdown. Onto Lonnie’s post . . .
Although I always make sure to keep plenty of Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur on hand so I can make my husband’s favorite drink – an Aviation – the pandemic ran down our supply of Luxardo Liqueur after three weeks of nightly cocktails. My local liquor store doesn’t carry this boutique liquor. With nothing to lose, I pulled a cheap, dusty bottle of Brandy I had and mixed it with some of the extra leftover Luxardo cherry syrup (that I knew would come in handy for something someday!) and concocted something that was a very decent stand-in for Luxardo Maraschino liquor. Visually, it differed as Luxardo Liqueur is clear, and the taste wasn’t identical, but my (sometimes) painfully honest husband raised his eyebrows in satisfaction after one sip, took a second sip and told me it was ‘pretty good!’ and tasted like the drink he loved. This concoction tided him over until we were able to get more Luxardo Maraschino. I also used it in The Last Word with great success. The color of each drink was different than usual (darker), but it worked reasonably well! I ended up using a 1:1 ratio of Luxardo cherry syrup from the jar to cheap Brandy.
