The Aviation cocktail has been one of my favorite since always. As Crème de violette is very hard to find where I live, I decided to give a shot at trying to do one by myself so I could drink my beloved beverage whenever I want it.

Since I didn’t have an alambic at home and couldn’t distillate natural flowers, my biggest challenge with this project was to find a way to input violet flavour in the mixture without making it taste artificial. Anis de Flavigny is a candy brand who uses natural violet flower water to flavour what they call their violet drops. They actually are anis seeds covered with flavoured sugar to make hard candy drops. They turned out to be the perfect base for my homemade crème de violette, especially because one of my favorite riff on the Aviation cocktail had anis flavour in it. The Royal Aviation I had a few years ago at the Bathtub Gin in New York is a traditional Aviation with an absinth rince and topped with Champagne… Delicious!

Then I needed to make some researches to decide what spirits I could use and some calculations to get the right amount of sugar to make a crème. Since my favorite Crème de violette is made out of German brandy I thought that a mix of cognac and vodka would be good. Here’s the recipe.

Homemade Crème de violette

– 400 ml Absolut vodka

– 60 ml Hennessy V.S. cognac

– 150 gr Anis de Flavigny violet drops

– 25 gr Sugar

– 8 drops of blue food coloring and 5 of red (for the pleasure of having the traditional blue hue to your drink)

Put the candies and alcohol in a Masson jar and seal tight then let dissolve. It will take about 24 hours. To help, shake the jar a few times during the process.

Once they’re all dissolved, strain the liquid because you will have a bunch of anis seeds in the bottom of the jar. Then add sugar and shake until dissolve.

Add food coloring and bottle.

Will keep indefinitely

My Aviation cocktail recipe with this Crème de violette

– 45 ml Tanqueray

– 20 ml Homemade Crème de violette

– 20 ml Fresh lemon juice

– 10 ml Luxardo Maraschino

Shake all the ingredient and strain in a chilled cocktail coupe

Garnish with an Amarena cherry

Cheers!