A while back I saw an arti­cle in “Art Culi­naire Mag­a­zine” with a few Aperol cock­tails and an Aperol faler­num recipe. The recipe came from Jane Lopez, Bev­er­age Direc­tor at The Cat­bird Seat, in Nashville, Ten­nessee. I thought this was a great idea and decided to make my own twist.

I used my go to faler­num recipe as a start­ing point, but omit­ted the fresh juice to help pro­long the liqueur’s shelf life. I also cut back on the cloves because my orig­i­nal recipe’s clove fla­vor was too dom­i­nant for this vari­a­tion. I played around with adding grape­fruit zest. The fla­vors worked well together, but I thought the grape­fruit zest down­played the Aperol just a touch. I decided to cut it from my final recipe, but if you want to use grape­fruit zest, go ahead and add it but limit the amount to less then a whole grape­fruit so the Aperol can shine.

Mak­ing faler­num is a fas­ci­nat­ing process, a lot like mak­ing bit­ters. I can’t wait to exper­i­ment with more unique fla­vor pro­files like a fig liqueur.

Recipe

• 5 oz Wray & Nephew Over­proof White Rum
• 5 oz Aperol Aperitivo
• Zest of 6 limes with no white pith
• Zest of 2 oranges with no white pith
• 20 whole cloves, toasted
• 1 ½ oz (by weight) peeled and chopped fresh ginger
• 2 table­spoons blanched, sliv­ered almonds (dry toasted until golden brown)
• 14 oz sim­ple syrup (I use 1:1)
• 1/4 tea­spoon almond extract

Instruc­tions

1. Com­bine the rum, Aperol, lime zest, orange zest, cloves, almonds and gin­ger in a sealed mason jar, let­ting mix­ture soak for 24 hours. For the zest, I use a microplane zester.
2. Strain through moist­ened cheese­cloth, squeeze out all the liquids.
3. Add the almond extract, and sugar syrup. Bot­tle in a ster­il­ized con­tainer and shake to incor­po­rate. I am not sure how long this should keep.

Have fun mak­ing cock­tails with this amaz­ing stuff! Here’s a sim­ple recipe called the Corn N’ Oil that tastes great with this Aperol faler­num used in place of the traditional.

Corn n’ Oil

• 2 1/2 oz El Dorado 12 year
• 1/2 oz of Aperol falernum
• 4 dashes of Angos­tura Bitters
• 2 lime wedges

This cock­tail recipe is so sim­ple you can build it directly in a dou­ble old fash­ioned rocks glass. Add your rum, faler­num, bit­ters, and then squeeze one lime wedge into the rocks glass. Add ice and stir. Gar­nish with the other lime wedge.