How To Make The Best Amaretto Sour Cocktail At Home

If you love the flavour balance of sweet and sour, then you'll enjoy the classic cocktail, amaretto sour.

When lockdown first fell upon us way back in March 2020, you either fell into one of two categories. You either A) baked your stresses away and turned your kitchen into the Bake Off tent or B) you finally put your bar cart to good use and hosted virtual happy hours. No matter which lockdown hobby you partook in to help ease self-isolation boredom, our bets say you have a bottle of Amaretto liqueur gathering dust at the back of your cupboard or bar cart. Whether you needed it to add a teaspoon to a cake batter or to put your own twist on a classic old fashioned, you're now left with a barely-used bottle full of almond-flavoured liqueur.

Rather than let it sit there until the next time you decide to bake, now is the time to try your hand at a new cocktail: a deliciously refreshing Amaretto Sour. The history of the Amaretto Sour seems to be fairly straightforward. Amaretto, a liqueur traditionally made with almonds, found its way from Italy to America during a wave of immigration. Italian-Americans introduced it into cocktail culture by adding lemon juice to make the original Amaretto Sour, sometime in the '70s. Through the years, the drink has gotten a bad name for itself due to being mixed with cheap sour mixes and unfairly being labelled as an "old-person cocktail."

But here at Food&Wine HQ, we're on a mission to make Amaretto Sours trendy again. To do so, we reached out to the experts in Amaretto liqueur, Disaronno, who have shared their updated take on the classic Amaretto Sour. Almonds and lemons combine for the ultimate winter warmer cocktail – don’t be put off by the egg white, it creates a wonderfully velvet-smooth finish to this sweet and sour classic.