Liqueurs and herbal spirits

What a liqueur is

A liqueur is a base spirit that has been sweetened and flavoured — by steeping, redistilling or percolating peel, herbs, nuts, coffee or fruit. It is usually weaker than the spirit it came from and far sweeter and heavier, so in a recipe it carries flavour and sugar at once: change its measure and the whole balance moves. The French crème de refers to a high sugar content, not to dairy; the ingredient that genuinely contains cream is cream liqueur.

Orange

Triple sec, orange curaçao and blue curaçao liqueur descend from one tradition: a liqueur flavoured with dried bitter orange peel. They differ in sweetness, time in wood and colouring. Triple sec is the driest and cleanest, the common skeleton of sour-shaped drinks such as the Margarita; blue curaçao is essentially the same liqueur wearing a colour.

Cherry, nut and coffee

• Maraschino liqueur — distilled from Marasca cherries, stones included, then sweetened. It is clear rather than red, with a dry kernel bitterness behind the sugar, and it anchors equal-parts classics like the Last Word.
• Amaretto — an Italian almond-flavoured liqueur, often built on apricot kernels. Round and sweet.
• Coffee liqueur — coffee steeped into sweetened spirit, roasted and bittersweet. Shaken with fresh espresso it gives the Espresso Martini its collar of foam.
• Cream liqueur — spirit emulsified with dairy cream. Thick in texture, and it needs refrigeration once opened.

Herbal

Chartreuse is made by Carthusian monks in France from a long list of plants; the green bottling is strong and aggressively herbal, the yellow one softer and sweeter. Bénédictine, from Normandy, is honeyed and spiced. Galliano is Italian, vanilla-and-anise scented, and unmistakable in its tall bottle. Drambuie combines Scotch whisky with honey and spice, and in the Rusty Nail it needs nothing but whisky beside it.

Fruit

Blackcurrant liqueur is dark and sharply sweet, usually paired with wine or something sparkling. In cocktail books, apricot brandy and apple schnapps almost always mean sweetened macerated fruit liqueurs rather than true distilled brandies. Peach, raspberry, blackberry and passion fruit liqueurs appear mostly in later recipes, where they supply fruit and colour at once.

Cacao, mint and violet

Cacao blanc liqueur and crème de menthe are sweet and frankly aromatic; the Grasshopper shakes them together with cream and is the model for the whole dessert family. Crème de violette is pale purple and heavily floral — a few millilitres too many and nothing else is audible.

Absinthe

Absinthe is not strictly a liqueur: it is unsweetened, very strong, and distilled with wormwood, anise and fennel, turning cloudy when water is added. In cocktails it arrives by the dash, or as a rinse — the Sazerac coats the glass with it and discards the rest, keeping only the aroma. Banned in several countries in the early twentieth century, it returned to legal sale from the 1990s onwards.

Neighbouring bitter ingredients are covered in vermouth and aperitifs and bitters.