Summit Sips

It might not sound like a very exciting drink this week, but chances are you have never had this drink properly prepared. A well-executed Whiskey Sour has the perfect balance of sweet and sour and highlights the wonderful flavors of good whiskey. It has a silky texture so it goes down easy and it’s topped with a wonderful meringue. If that’s not how you would describe a Whiskey Sour then you must be making it wrong.

The sour is an important cocktail classification. There are many examples. A typical sour cocktail consists of a base spirit, a souring agent and a sweetener. In this case, the base is bourbon, and the souring ingredient is lemon juice. Sugar (or simple syrup) is the sweetener. Did you think I was going to use a store-bought sweet and sour mix? You must know better than that by now!

Sour mix itself probably started with fresh ingredients that were pre-mixed behind the bar to save time, but like many bar products, it evolved into a bottle of chemicals and artificial flavors. I suppose it only makes sense since so many cocktails follow the basic sour formula. A margarita, for instance, is a tequila sour—lime is the souring component and triple sec is the sweetener. A daiquiri is really just a rum sour. You get the idea. The problem with the bottled mix (besides the fact that it isn’t freshly squeezed juice) is that various sours call for different souring agents and sweeteners. You could compromise and make a mix that has both lemons and limes, but that’s the whole point—you compromise. The better cocktail is one made to order with fresh ingredients. Oh, and there’s one more thing: egg white.

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