{"id":485,"date":"2021-02-22T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T11:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2021\/02\/cherry-bounce.html"},"modified":"2021-02-22T11:47:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T11:47:00","slug":"cherry-bounce-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=485","title":{"rendered":"Cherry Bounce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most summers, I try really hard to get my hands on some fresh sour<\/a> cherries<\/a>; I haunt the greenmarket<\/a> and interrogate the farmers, trying to see when the season (which is about five minutes long<\/a>) might commence. I lucked out a while back and got a ton of cherries (which ain't cheap!), and turned most of them into Maraschino cherries<\/a>. But the rest I saved for Cherry Bounce, a very old liqueur.<\/p>\n

\"Cherry<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"Cherrybouncer<\/a><\/a>How old? Well, it was first mentioned in print in 1681<\/a>: a definition given for "confused" is "any Hotch-potch; or any mingled drink; as punch, cherrybouncer, &c.<\/em>" Many more citations follow throughout the 17th and 18th centuries<\/a>. When ex-general and future President George Washington journeyed west across the Alleghenies to inspect his property in September 1784, he recorded in his diary<\/a> that he carried, (along with two eight-gallon kegs of West India rum, "one of them of the first quality"), Madeira, Port, and cherry bounce:<\/p>\n

\"Cherry
Apparently a recipe for Cherry Bounce was found in Martha Washington's papers<\/a> (though not written in her hand), and Mount Vernon has posted an adaptation on their website<\/a>. It's one of several recipes I found, and they're all fairly similar; you mix cherries with sugar and liquor and let it sit for a while, then strain and decant. Culinary historian Joyce White presents this recipe,<\/a> and I found others in Marion Harland's "Common sense in the household: a manual of practical housewifery,<\/a>" from 1873, and in Martha McCulloch-Williams's "Dishes & beverages of the Old South<\/a>," from 1913, among others. I went with one from the 1840 edition<\/a> of the very popular "Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches<\/a>," by Eliza Leslie:<\/p>\n

\"Cherry<\/p>\n

Since Miss Leslie used a mix of Morello ("morella") cherries and "large black heart cherries", I used a mix of sour cherries and the cheaper & more easily findable sweet Bing cherries. After pitting them, I pounded them with a mallet to crack the stones, added demerara sugar, and added Rittenhouse and Old Overholt rye whiskey, and let it sit:<\/p>\n

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