Make Your Sazerac With…Cynar?

The 8-Amaro Sazerac and a 1-Amaro Saz. Low-proof January continues.

At the beginning of this month, we explored the basics of low-proof cocktails with a brief tour of the low-proof cocktail toolkit. Low-proof drinks often involve shifting the composition of cocktails toward fortified wines like sherry and vermouth rather than conventional high-proof spirits. But you can also construct delicious low-proof cocktails out of amari — including and especially Cynar. 

Regular readers are well aware of my fondness for the earthy, bitter, vegetal liqueur. I put it in everything, and I recommend that everyone else do the same. 

Cynar isn’t just delicious and versatile: At just 16.5% alcohol by volume, it’s also relatively low-proof. And yet it has the sort of heavy body and abundant flavor profile that you’d expect from a bottle with a much bigger kick, like, say, Chartreuse or Bénédictine. 

Cynar isn’t quite as intensely herbal as either of those bottles, but it has a comparable complexity and force of flavor that makes it an incredibly effective and versatile modifier in cocktails: You can slide a bit of Cynar into a huge array of cocktail formats and come away with something that is, at the very least, intriguing, and often quite delicious. 

But Cynar has a hidden talent: In addition to its usefulness as a modifier, it also makes a surprisingly effective base ingredient, filling in slots usually reserved for whiskey or aged rum. 

We’ve already seen this in drinks like the Cynar Sour and the Bitter Guiseppe, which is basically a Manhattan but with Cynar instead of whiskey. 

But this week, I want to show you how Cynar works in yet another format — a stirred-and-boozy drink that’s best in colder weather. 

So for this week’s low-proof cocktail, I want you to put Cynar in your Sazerac. Actually, let me rephrase that: I want you to make a Sazerac — except instead of rye or brandy, I want you to use Cynar as the base ingredient. 

Yes, just Cynar. That’s it. 

This isn’t a flavor modifier or a split base or anything like that. It’s just a Sazerac, with Cynar. 

Dear readers, when I told you to put Cynar in everything, I really, relly, wasn’t kidding. 

When the Rye Hits Your Eye Like a Long Winter Sigh, That’s Amore 

Before we go further, a brief refresher on the Sazerac: It can be understood an Old Fashioned variation — typically made with rye, but sometimes with aged brandy, or a combination of the two — with a couple of key modifications.