For 13 years, the Cherry Bounce has been one of the top sellers at Comstock Saloon in San Francisco. The drink is a bourbon-based Whiskey Sour made with brandied cherry juice, lemon and Angostura bitters, plus a splash of prosecco. Back when Comstock Saloon was in its early days, a friend of owner Jonny Raglin told him about a drink called Cherry Bounce that he’d seen mentioned in a book about 20th-century chop suey restaurants. Raglin’s friend told him that the drink had been served at an old bar in Hollywood in the years following World War II, and that it was a simple mixture of cherry brandy and sparkling wine. Raglin took that as a prompt for creating his own take.
Despite the happenstance beginnings of this “Cherry Bounce” cocktail, the original cherry bounce has a much longer history. Cherry bounce was originally a term for a homemade liqueur, usually rye- or brandy-based, made with sour cherries and sugar, and flavored with spices. The earliest recipes date to late 17th-century England, and the liqueur made its way to the British colonies in North America, evidenced by the well-known recipe credited to Martha Washington. It is a divine nectar. This writer has made it using sugar, vanilla, and local western Massachusetts sour cherries, letting the mixture sit from July until Thanksgiving, and never before have I been so pleased with a homemade infusion.
Raglin eventually began digging into the history of the original cherry bounce, and was taken with stories of George Washington’s fondness for it. “It was like this bottled cordial, and Washington took it with him on his treks and he would trade port and Madeira with Native Americans. I don’t know if any of this is true,” says Raglin, but supposedly, “he would keep the cherry bounce for he and his men.”
Though the most famous surviving recipe is credited to Martha Washington, given that the Washingtons enslaved almost 600 people during their time at Mount Vernon, including the workers in their rye distillery, it is more likely that an enslaved person working in their household developed the recipe. The ingredients include cinnamon, clove and nutmeg; it also calls for cracked cherry pits, which impart an almond-like flavor (but contain trace amounts of cyanide). Housekeeping manuals from the pre–Civil War period feature similar recipes.
For his cocktail, Raglin says the recipe came together one morning before lunch service. He made a simple Whiskey Sour with the brandied cherry juice from the bar’s favored brand, Griottines, replacing most of the sugar (bolstered by a small measure of simple syrup), and splashed a bit of prosecco at the end. He added bitters to give the drink more dimension and spiced flavor, which unwittingly nods to the 18th-century version.
The choice to use bourbon was natural at a bar that for many years was the biggest Four Roses account west of the Mississippi. The Griottines cherry juice, Raglin says, is “basically cherry bounce” in the old sense. Though he’s tried using Cherry Heering instead in this drink, nothing but the Griottines juice will do. Other cherry brandies and liqueurs, he says, have the problem of reminding people of cherry-flavored cough syrup.
Raglin reports that the Cherry Bounce has a wide appeal to large swaths of customers who come into the bar. “It’s not such a fancy whiskey cocktail that your hardened bro that drinks Old-Fashioneds wouldn’t have one and enjoy it.” But it also appeals to those who don’t typically gravitate toward whiskey drinks, too. The liqueur version is similarly a crowd-pleaser: It captures the perfection of summer fruit, carrying it through into the dark days of winter.
For such a simple beverage, the Comstock Saloon’s Cherry Bounce has had incredible staying power on the bar’s menu. Raglin points to its wide appeal as a Whiskey Sour riff, but he maintains that he’s never heard a better name for a cocktail. “With a name like that,” says Raglin, “it would have to taste horrible to not be successful.”
