An after-dinner cocktail with spirituous bourbon, sweetened and mellowed by rich cherry. (We previously had this cocktail served straight-up but it's better...
Ive tried the recipe and its very good, but why is it that in the video, and all the videos ive seen about this cocktail, they only use the bourbon or Rye and the cherry Heering ?
I'm in a stretch of trying to use up (just for the sake of freeing up shelf space) a Portuguese cherry liqueur a friend gave a couple years back, Mariquinhas. Great on its own, but not necessarily a sub for Heering. But I didn't have any Heering on hand either, just Sangue Morlacco... Vastly different drink going from the former to the latter. I prefer it with the Luxardo. But the big takeaway is how interesting this simple cocktail is (or could be), depending on the brands.
Three years later, I agree with Nathalie. This is going on my list of favorite after dinner drinks. I’ve seen a few Americans push back on Heering because the cherry flavor reminds us of a common childhood medicine. It’s not that I disagree, but that Cherry flavor is more of a candy like cherry flavor that is pervasive here. I taste the same flavor is old school cherry soda and homemade cherry candies. It’s one of my favorite flavors.
Made 2 changes. Didn’t understand the tiny amount of maraschino so just went with 3/4 oz (22.5 ml) of cherry liqueur. This was, surprisingly, not too desperately sweet with 1.5 oz Stranahan’s cask strength Rocky Mountain single malt whiskey, but it needed something else. That turned out to be 1 tsp (5 ml) of Italian red bitter liqueur; tried both Campari and Martini & Rossi Speciale Bitter with good results. Was unable to find any other whiskey-cherry liqueur drinks in Difford’s database!
Although apparently not well known and not top rated, this one belongs to my little book of "recurring" cocktails, those that I make several times a year (3-4), in fact one of our favourites from the stirring cocktails sub-genre.