Amaro Nonino: Another bitter ingredient with a hint of sweetness.Aperol: A bitter, orange-red hued apéritif (a drink used before a meal to stimulate the appetite).Bourbon: Use a mid-range to high-quality bourbon for this recipe like Bulliet, Knob Creek, or Buffalo Trace.Here are the ingredients that you need to make this cocktail at home.

This cocktail perfectly showcases the four simple ingredients – bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, and fresh lemon juice. Sure, I like a fruity daiquiri or fancy cocktail sometimes, but I love simple drinks like this one. It brings a smile to my face that new cocktails like this one are still being crafted. He served the cocktail at Milk and Honey (his own NYC restaurant) with a little paper plane garnish. Ross named the cocktail after the song “Paper Planes” (by M.I.A), a popular hit at the time. But the truth is that the Paper Plane Cocktail was created in 2008! This recipe was crafted by an award-winning bartender named Sam Ross. This cocktail tastes like it’s been around for ages with its simple nature, complex flavors, and herbal qualities. It’s another reason why I love to make this cocktail for friends and family. The pale red and orange color is stunning and creates almost a deep sunset-like hue. It also looks beautiful once poured into a cocktail glass (which is always a plus in my book!). The mix of bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, and fresh lemon juice creates a beautifully balanced and pleasantly bitter flavor. This Paper Plane Cocktail is basically straight liquor but it doesn’t feel like you’re drinking from a shot glass. Everyone always asks, “what is that beautiful drink!?” and they end up loving it as much as I do. It’s magical in its simplicity and my girlfriends agree! I love making it during at-home happy hours.

And I find myself making this Paper Plane Cocktail quite often. The switch in bourbons, and whether they're considered integral to one incarnation of the drink or the other, isn't something I feel I can comment on with any authority, beyond my personal experience above and stating that I prefer the drink with Elijah Craig.Sometimes you just need a simple and classy cocktail. We discussed the fact that he'd come up with it for the Violet Hour menu and even the Aperol/Campari variation, but my memory is very hazy of the timeline of the change(s) (if we discussed it at all).based on the half-remembered conversation and Toby's claim, I'd be pretty confident saying the Campari version/Paper Airplane was Sammy's original recipe, but then he adjusted it to Aperol and changed the name slightly to reflect that. What I know from personally being served the drink by both men is that Toby's at The Violet Hour in the summer of '08 was called a Paper Airplane and included Buffalo Trace and Campari, and that when I ordered a 'Paper Plane' from Sammy at M&H a couple years later, he made it with Elijah Craig and Aperol. I somehow managed to internalize Sammy making it differently than Toby had as 'Toby must have tweaked Sammy's recipe' rather than thinking that Sammy would have evolved his own. He made me the drink before Sammy did, which I think muddied the causality waters in my mind.

Paper plane cocktail