Crème de Violette
A pale-purple violet liqueur that vanished from the US market around 1960, took the Aviation cocktail down with it, and only came back in 2007 when Eric Seed at Haus Alpenz pushed Rothman & Winter into a single specialty shop in New York.
What it is
Crème de Violette is a sweet liqueur produced by macerating violet flowers, almost always Viola odorata from the Alps and the Pyrenees, in a neutral spirit and then sweetening the result heavily. The classic versions are 16 to 20 percent ABV and run about 250 to 350 grams of sugar per liter, which is why the name uses the word crème. In French liqueur classification, crème means a liqueur with at least 250 grams of sugar per liter, with 400 grams for crème de cassis specifically. It is not a dairy product.
The color is the signature. A real Crème de Violette runs from a soft lavender to a deeper amethyst, and good versions get there from the flowers themselves rather than from food coloring. The taste is unmistakably floral, slightly powdery, with a candied edge and a long sweet finish. It is not subtle. A bar spoon is a lot. A quarter ounce in a cocktail is the working dose.
Where it shows up
The signature drink is the Aviation, first printed in Hugo Ensslin's 1917 Recipes for Mixed Drinks. Ensslin wrote it as gin, lemon juice, Maraschino, and Crème de Violette. The violette is what gives the drink its sky color and its name. When the liqueur disappeared from US shelves around 1960, later cocktail books simply dropped it. Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book already lists the Aviation without violette, which is why a generation of bartenders learned a paler, more austere version of the drink that does not match the original.
Other places it appears in the canon: the Blue Moon, a gin sour bumped with violette and named for its color, dating from the early 1900s. The Eagle's Dream, an Ensslin-era variation. Layered Pousse Café drinks where its weight and color slot between heavier and lighter components. Modern bartenders also use it as a half-spoon perfumer in gin and cucumber drinks where they want the floral note without changing the structure.
The historical arc
Violet liqueurs were a French and central European tradition long before they showed up in American cocktail books. Recipes appear in Pierre Duplais's nineteenth-century distilling treatises, and several Alsatian and Austrian distilleries were producing commercial versions by the 1880s. The product reached the United States as part of the broader European liqueur import boom in the decades before Prohibition, when bartenders like Jerry Thomas, Harry Johnson, and later Hugo Ensslin built drinks on a pantry that assumed access to dozens of European specialty bottles.
Prohibition in 1920 cut the supply. After Repeal in 1933, some of the bigger continental brands came back to the US quickly, but Crème de Violette was a marginal product even before the ban. By the late 1950s the last commercial importer had stopped, and from roughly 1960 to 2007 there was no Crème de Violette on US shelves at all. A few French and Austrian distilleries kept producing for the European market, but the bottles did not cross the Atlantic. The Aviation in mid-century books became gin, lemon, Maraschino, and people forgot what the original tasted like.
The reset came in 2007. Eric Seed at Haus Alpenz, the importer who has been responsible for bringing back more lost European bottles than anyone alive, partnered with the Austrian distillery Rothman & Winter to introduce Rothman & Winter Crème de Violette into the US. The first cases landed in New York. Within two years it was on cocktail menus across the country, and the original Aviation came back into circulation as the standard recipe. PUNCH ran a long piece on the Rothman & Winter relaunch in 2014 that documented the chain of phone calls between Seed, Rothman, and a handful of New York bartenders who had been making their own infusions to try to fake the missing ingredient.
Modern brands
Three brands cover most of the US market, and they are not interchangeable.
- Rothman & Winter Crème de Violette (Austria, 20% ABV). The standard. Imported by Haus Alpenz. Real flowers, lavender to amethyst color, dry-leaning sweetness for the category. This is the one most cocktail books are calling for when they say Crème de Violette.
- Giffard Crème de Violette (France, 16% ABV). Slightly sweeter, more candied, deeper purple. A French confectionery profile rather than the Austrian floral one. Some bartenders prefer it in the Aviation. Both are correct.
- The Bitter Truth Violet Liqueur (Germany, 22% ABV). A drier, more concentrated take. Less sweet, more violet-pastille than violet-flower. Useful when you want the perfume without the sugar.
Modern substitutions
The closest cousin is Crème Yvette, which is also violet-based but adds berries and spice and is more complex. Yvette in an Aviation makes a richer drink, not the same drink. The Bitter Truth Violet is the closest direct sub, but with less sugar you may need to adjust the lemon and Maraschino. Beyond those, there is no real substitute. Parfait Amour is rose and orange and citrus, not violet. A violet-flower simple syrup made from food-grade culinary violets gets you halfway, but without the spirit base you lose the structure that makes the cocktail work.
The honest answer is that if a recipe calls for Crème de Violette and you do not have it, the drink is a different drink. The Aviation without violette is a pretty pale gin sour. It is fine. It is not what Ensslin wrote.
Where to buy
In the US, total Wine and BevMo carry Rothman & Winter and Giffard most of the time. Online, Drizly, ReserveBar, and Caskers all stock at least one. A 750ml bottle of Rothman & Winter runs about thirty dollars and lasts a long time because the dose is so small. The Bitter Truth is a little cheaper and harder to find outside specialty shops.
At a glance
| Category | Floral liqueur |
|---|---|
| Origin | France and Austria, nineteenth century |
| ABV | 16 to 22 percent |
| Color | Pale lavender to deep amethyst |
| US gap | Roughly 1960 to 2007 |
| Returned via | Rothman & Winter, imported by Haus Alpenz |
| Signature drink | Aviation (Hugo Ensslin, 1917) |
Cocktails to try
The three drinks worth opening a bottle for, all in the Codex:
- Aviation · gin, lemon, Maraschino, Crème de Violette. Ensslin's original spec.
- Blue Moon · gin, lemon, Crème de Violette, sometimes with a dash of orange bitters.
- Eagle's Dream · gin, lemon, Crème de Violette, egg white, sugar. Ensslin again.
The Aviation without violette is a different drink, and a generation of bartenders learned the wrong one because the right one had no ingredients.
The Lost Cocktail Codex is a free PDF with the full Ensslin Aviation, the Blue Moon, the Eagle's Dream, and 47 other pre-Prohibition recipes hand-transcribed from five manuscripts. Drop your email below.