Apple Spice Whiskey Sours

One of the best things to come from our weekend away in Packwood, what I’m calling our “family sneak out before the holiday hustle,” is this layered cocktail. More specifically my new learned skill of layering cocktails, and fucking nailing it! These Apple Spice Whiskey Sours incorporate all the fun stuff - clarifying your cocktail, making a sweet apple-spice simple syrup, and (my favorite bit) a floater on top. In this case a red wine floater. Sounds wild with a whiskey sour, but I couldn’t resist trying it. Spoiler - it’s awesome! These little cocktails aew so delicious we made them again for election night at home.

We are OBSESSED with the clarified cocktail craze, and it’s heavenly with a whiskey sour. The flavor is just so clean and there’s nothing I’d change about it. The milk gets 100% filtered out to the point you’d never know it was there in the first place. My means for straining - a paper towel + a strainer. So simple and works like a charm!

We did make this a Fall coded cocktail with an apple spiced syrup - literally the perfect dose of seasonal flavor. The spice notes are subtle but appreciated, and the apple sweetness is nothing but enjoyable.

I was so intimidated to try the floating component, and had already chalked it up as a failute before even attempting it. Lesson that I learned - get the right tool + this impressive little trick is child’s play! A long cocktail spoon with a flat edge on one end is all your need. Float the flat edge just above the cocktail + slowly drizzle the wine down the thin stem of the spoon, and you’ve got it. The wine stay perfectly settled on top of the whiskey sour and had a very definitive layer that held up even as we sipped on our drinks.

Brings me to my next point - the taste of a red wine floater with a whiskey sour. My recap - not offensive. The drink stay pretty layered even as you sip on it, and so you essentially get 2 cocktails in one here. First is the red wine, and you get a little bit of a combo as you get into the whiskey sour. We enjoyed the combo, though I wouldn’t just mix the two together from the jump.

 
 

For the apple syrup

  • 1 Honeycrisp apple, cut into segments

  • 1 c. brown sugar

  • 1 cinnamon stick

For the cocktail (makes 2)

  • 3 ounces rye whiskey

  • 1 1/2 ounces lemon juice

  • 1 ounce apple syrup

  • bitters

  • 2 ounces milk

  • for garnishg: cocktail cherries

Start by making the syrup

Lesley ZehnerComment