Amaretto Sour with Bourbon

A craft-reworked amaretto sour that balances amaretto's sweetness with high-proof bourbon backbone, fresh lemon, and an egg white foam for proper complexity.

The Amaretto Sour with Bourbon takes the core insight of Jeffrey Morgenthaler's landmark 2012 recipe reformulation — that amaretto's low alcohol content makes it an insufficient base spirit without supplementation — and makes that bourbon addition the defining characteristic rather than a supporting element. Morgenthaler, bar manager at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon, identified that the standard Amaretto Sour was criticized not for its almond flavor but for being too sweet and too weak, and that a measure of cask-strength bourbon provided the structural backbone the drink needed without significantly altering its almond-forward character. The bourbon's vanilla and caramel notes from oak aging are genuinely complementary to amaretto's marzipan and dried-fruit character — both derive sweetness from related aromatic compounds, with amaretto's benzaldehyde from apricot kernels and bourbon's lactones from toasted oak producing flavors that coexist rather than compete. The ratio matters: enough bourbon to give the drink presence without overwhelming the amaretto's character is typically around one part bourbon to one part amaretto, with fresh lemon juice providing the acid and egg white providing the foam. The result is a drink that sits comfortably in both the amaretto liqueur cocktail category and the whiskey sour category, occupying a middle ground between the two that neither alone produces.