averna jimjam

1 1/2 oz Averna
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
3/4 oz Marie Brizard Apry

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
After my DJ set on Monday, Andrea and I went up the street to Eastern Standard. There we found seats in front of bartender Hugh Fiore, and I asked Hugh for something with the amaro Averna in it. After inquiring if citrus was okay, Hugh set to work on a drink created a while back by Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli. The Averna Jimjam was semi-sweet on the sip, and it dried out on the swallow perhaps due to Averna's bitter complexity. What was most intriguing about the drink was that it tasted almost cherryish, yet there was no cherry liqueur in the recipe. Instead, I surmise that it was the interaction of the Averna with the apricot liqueur that generated the cherry flavor. As the drink warmed up and the balance shifted slightly, the fruit flavor became slightly more identifiable as apricot though.