How One Bartender Created the 21st Century’s Most Iconic Whiskey Cocktails, the Paper Plane and Penicillin
If you passed through New York’s iconic Times Square this past June and looked up from your smartphone, you would have seen the world’s largest Paper Plane cocktail. Seven times an hour for two weeks, a 15-second advertisement for the Italian Amaro Nonino ran on a giant 8,500-square-foot billboard. It showed a bartender making a Paper Plane, which calls for bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino (naturally), and lemon juice. While this certainly gives you a taste of how well known the drink is, it’s hard to overstate its popularity around the country. It’s gone old-school viral and now appears on the menus of countless bars and restaurants. And that’s not to mention the San Jose, CA, bar, which is named after the cocktail. No one would blame you for thinking that—like the old-fashioned or Manhattan—the Paper Plane dates back to the 1800s, when the rest of the cocktail classics were invented during the first golden age of bartending. But you’d be dead wrong. The Paper Plane wasn’t created in...