Recipe Amaretto Whisky Sour: The Whisky Sour Perfected
The Amaretto Sour,
rescued from itself.
The Amaretto Sour spent the 1980s as one of the most popular cocktails on American bar menus — and the same decade being made badly. Then Jeffrey Morgenthaler rebuilt it with wheated bourbon. Here's what changed.
The Amaretto Sour fell out of fashion because most versions were too sweet. Sour mix instead of fresh lemon. Generic almond liqueur instead of Di Saronno. No bourbon at all. By the end of the 1980s, no serious bartender would touch it. The rescue came from one blog post.
Portland, 2012.
The Morgenthaler rebuild.
Jeffrey Morgenthaler was the bartender at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon. In 2012 he published a blog post titled "I Make the Best Amaretto Sour in the World" — a deliberately provocative title that turned out to be true.
His recipe added a measure of premium bourbon, called for real lemon, doubled the amount of fresh citrus, and finished with a proper egg-white foam. Most serious bars settled on a wheated bourbon — Maker's Mark in particular — because wheat carries the lemon and amaretto where rye would fight them. Saveur magazine called the rebuild "a flawless drink." Within five years it was on the menu at Death & Co, Maybe Sammy, the Tippling Club. The 1980s version was forgotten.
Why Maker's Mark
and not just any bourbon.
Bill Samuels Sr. bought Burks' Distillery in Loretto, Kentucky in 1953 for $35,000. He spent the next year building a mashbill that would produce a bourbon as different from the rye-mash standard as he could make it. As he didn't have time to distill and age each candidate, he tested them as loaves of bread. The no-rye recipe — 70% corn, 16% red winter wheat, 14% malted barley — won.
Maker's Mark is one of the few major American distilleries built on a wheated mashbill. Wheat where most bourbons use rye. The result is softer, sweeter, and vanilla-forward — less peppery, more rounded, with the kind of caramel-and-honey weight that holds up to Di Saronno's almond character without competing for the palate. Rye is a spice; wheat is a foundation. In an Amaretto Whisky Sour, you want a foundation.
The distillery sits on Star Hill Farm — the only Kentucky distillery with its own spring-fed, limestone-filtered watershed. The hand-dipped red wax seal was designed by Bill's wife, Marge Samuels, who also designed the bottle, the label, and the brand identity. Every bottle is still dipped by hand at the distillery today.
The four
non-negotiables.
Di Saronno or nothing.
Generic almond liqueur is the single biggest reason 1980s Amaretto Sours were bad. Di Saronno has been made in Saronno, Italy since 1525 — cherry-almond, slightly dry, complex. Anything else falls flat.
Wheated bourbon. Maker's Mark.
Bourbon grounds the cocktail. Wheated bourbon — 70% corn, 16% red winter wheat, no rye — carries the citrus and almond instead of competing with them. Loretto, Kentucky's gift to a cocktail that needed rescuing.
Fresh lemon, always.
Sour mix is the cocktail-revival equivalent of cardinal sin. Real lemon — pressed fresh — is the spine of every great sour. The acid has to be alive.
The foam is structural.
A whisky sour without foam is just a glass of liquid. The dense, silky cap is what makes the drink read as a proper sour. Egg white in the bar, foam activator in the pouch — either way, the foam must be built during the shake.
The world-class recipe,
step by step.
Amaretto Whisky Sour
Ingredients
- 45 mlDi Saronno Originale
- 22 mlMaker's Mark Bourbon
- 22 mlFresh lemon juice
- 7.5 ml2:1 sugar syrup
- ½Egg white
- ×Lemon twist; brandied cherry, optional
Method
- Chill a rocks glass in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
- Combine all liquids and the egg white in a shaker.
- Dry shake hard for 10 seconds — no ice.
- Add large dry ice cubes and wet shake for 12 seconds.
- Fine strain over a single large ice cube in the chilled glass.
- Express a lemon peel over the surface. Brandied cherry optional.
Our build,
on Morgenthaler's framework.
We built the MXTology Amaretto Whisky Sour on the same template. Di Saronno Originale, the only amaretto a serious bartender will use in this drink. Maker's Mark Bourbon Whiskey from Loretto, Kentucky — the wheated bourbon Bill Samuels Sr. built in 1953 by testing mashbills as loaves of bread. CitrusFresh™ lemon locked at peak brightness. A whisky-sour foam activator that builds the silky crema without raw egg.
Shake the pouch and the foam activator emulsifies into the silky crema cap a serious bartender would pull with an egg white. The dilution lands exactly where a 12-second hard shake would land in the bar. The Maker's Mark carries the lemon and amaretto the way a rye bourbon never could.
of a proper bartender's build.
Final Pour
The Amaretto Sour fell out of fashion because most versions skipped on the spirit, the citrus, and the foam. Morgenthaler rebuilt it. We poured it — with the wheated bourbon that taught a generation what an Amaretto Sour should taste like.
Di Saronno Originale. Maker's Mark Bourbon. Real lemon. Everything like what a serious bar would pour today.