Aviation

Gin, maraschino, crème de violette, and lemon — Ensslin's 1916 creation, Craddock's 1930 Savoy omitting the violette, Rothman & Winter restoring it in 2007.

The Aviation is one of the most important pre-Prohibition cocktails in the American canon — a drink created by Hugo Ensslin, head bartender at the Hotel Wallick in New York City, and first published in his 1916 booklet Recipes for Mixed Drinks. The formula combines gin, maraschino liqueur, crème de violette, and fresh lemon juice, the crème de violette producing a pale sky-blue color that inspired the aviation theme at a moment when powered flight was still a vivid public novelty — the Wright Brothers had made their Kitty Hawk flights only thirteen years before the cocktail's documentation. Harry Craddock republished the recipe without the crème de violette in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), which contributed to the violet liqueur's commercial decline and virtual disappearance from the American market through the mid-20th century. Bartenders making the Aviation from Craddock's recipe produced a different drink — still pleasant, but without the color and floral dimension that defined Ensslin's original. The cocktail's authentic revival required waiting for crème de violette to return to commercial availability: Rothman & Winter reintroduced their Austrian Crème de Violette to the United States market in 2007, and bartenders with access to Ensslin's original recipe — recovered and championed by cocktail historians including Ted Haigh in his 2004 book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails — could finally reproduce the drink as designed. The Aviation's revival became one of the defining stories of the early 21st-century craft cocktail movement.