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New York Sour

New York Sour

Name: New York Sour
Prep time: 0
Cook time: 0
Total time: 0
Yield: 1
Cuisine: Cocktails
Ingredients: 60 ml Rye Whiskey or Bourbon; 22.5 ml Simple syrup; 30 ml fresh lemon juice; Few drops of egg white; 15 ml Red wine (Shiraz or Malbech)

By: Aarushi Agrawal

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The New York Sour is a complex and layered drink. Essentially a bourbon based whisky sour, it's made more nuanced by adding a float of red wine on top, making it not just more striking to look at but also more fun to drink. The egg white adds a gooeyness to the drink, giving it a more present mouthfeel, and also alters the appearance, like a stroke of white running through the glass.

A Sour will generally use rye whisky or bourbon for the base. Rye makes the spice notes stand out more prominently but both options are delicious in their own way. For the wine float, pick a fruity wine like the shiraz or merlot.

new york sour cocktail

In case you don't have the desired ingredients, it's possible to use certain substitutes that nonetheless retain the spirit of the drink but lead to different cocktails. For instance, if you don't have an egg on hand, then make a rye whiskey sour with the red wine float, essentially leading to a Brunswick. If the wine you choose to float is a port wine, use a whiskey sour base, leading to a Continental Sour. If you're using a rye whiskey sour, pair it with the egg white and the red wine float to create the Greenwich Sour. If you simply add apricot liqueur and orange juice to the mix, you’ll have a New York Stone Sour and if you only add the orange juice to the New York Sour you’ll have a New Yorker.

There’s some speculation that the drink was first created in the 1880s by a Chicago bartender, but there’s no clear evidence about who invented it. Some suggest that the drink was first known as the Continental Sour, then the Southern Whiskey Sour, then was confused with the Brunswick Sour and was then called the Claret Snap. The theory goes that only after it started being served in Manhattan by a bartender did it get the name New York Sour, and become popular as that. With this name, it first appears in print in the 1934 book Mr Boston Bartender’s Guide.

The New York Sour is essentially a variant of the Sour, which is a category of cocktails with a long history. The sours were popularised by the British Navy, who used these drinks as a way of combating scurvy and malnutrition. To make grogs, sailors also mixed their rationed rum with lime juice, leading to the nickname limeys. Sailors also brought Punches and Grogs ashore, and Punch Houses were established in London in around the 1600s. The Sour became a natural evolution of this type of drink, using similar ingredients, and is essentially just a mini punch recipe.