Perfecting the Morning Glory Cocktail

After the cheesemaking class, I met my parents for brunch in the center of one of the local towns. Although friends of mine had often been to this restaurant, none of the three of us had. But we checked out the brunch menu on OpenTable when I made the reservations, and it seemed really good. While my meal of crabcakes and home fries was excellent, my drink was unforgettable. They called it a Morning Glory, and it was St. Germain, limoncello, and prosecco served in a champagne flute without any fussy garnish. I let both of my parents try it, and they both agreed that it was delicious.

Of course, when I got home, I regretted not having asked for the recipe. I texted a few of my prosecco-loving friends to tell them how awesome the combination was, and they encouraged me to experiment in order to figure out the recipe on my own. That seemed like a reasonable suggestion, but it also seemed reasonable to check my sources to see if there already existed a recipe for a Morning Glory that I could just tweak to my tastes.

Internet Research

A very quick Google search for “Morning Glory Cocktail” yielded a wide variety of results. The recipe in Imbibe Magazine was equal parts rye and cognac, with accents of orange curacao, simple syrup, absinthe, and Angostura bitters, and then topped with club soda and garnished with a lemon twist. The recipe in the Spruce was almost exactly the same, although they claimed that their recipe was adapted from Jerry Thomas’s 1887 Bartenders’ Guide. Serious Eats also offered an almost exact replica of the Imbibe recipe, with a claim to roots in Jerry Thomas’s 1887 work. Angel’s Envy also had a very similar recipe, although they did offer the option to substitute champagne for the club soda. Finally, I stumbled upon a blog that reproduced the 1887 Jerry Thomas recipe, along with a more modern take that used champagne instead of club soda. Punch’s recipe was a bit different from the recipes that descended from the Jerry Thomas line. It was for a fizz that was a 4:1:1:1 ratio of blended Scotch, lemon juice, lime juice, and simple syrup. That all got dry shaken with one egg white and a few dashes of absinthe, then shaken with ice to chill, then strained, and then topped with soda. The Bar None Drinks recipe was also for a fizz: Scotch, anisette, lemon juice, powdered sugar, egg white, and carbonated water. The only recipe that contained champagne was way off base: it was 4:1 orange juice to triple sec and then topped with champagne! When I revised my Google search to “Morning Glory Cocktail Limoncello,” I basically got the same results.

Gathering Supplies

Since I had to visit the small local liquor store after work to buy prosecco for an upcoming sisters’ weekend, I decided to check out their limoncello collection. They had three Italian limoncellos on the top shelf and an award winning locally made limoncello on a shelf that I could reach. Since I couldn’t touch or even read the bottles on the top shelf, I decided to ask one of the super helpful folks at the store for a recommendation. He said he was always partial to local products, so he would recommend the locally made limoncello. The woman working in the store with him agreed that the local limoncello was amazing, so I decided on that bottle. Otherwise, I already had two mini bottles of prosecco in my refrigerator and a mostly full bottle of elderflower liqueur, both leftover from my recipe testing elderflower liqueur cocktails.

Conducting Experiments

There were three things that I had to do before I started my experiments. First, I needed to find a champagne flute that looked like the one that they used at the restaurant. I knew where a set of six smaller champagne flutes were, but I wanted to find the one odd larger glass that was about the size that they used at the restaurant. Then I could judge color as well as taste. Second, I needed to know the capacity of the champagne flute so that I could properly scale the amount of liqueur vis-à-vis the amount of champagne. That was easy – I just used one of my colorful measuring beakers and counted. It had a five ounce capacity. Finally, I needed to taste test the limoncello for sweetness, tartness, and alcoholic bite. I poured a scant half ounce into my colorful measuring beaker, and took a sip. The first taste that hit me was the alcoholic bite, and then the pleasant lemony sweetness. It definitely tasted a lot stronger than 50 proof, which swayed me from starting with a liqueur base of 1:1 elderflower liqueur to limoncello.

My initial experiment was 1 ounce elderflower liqueur, ½ ounce limoncello, and approximately 3½ ounces prosecco. I measured the elderflower liqueur and the limoncello into the champagne flute, and then I topped with chilled prosecco. It tasted really good! If I had any critique, it would be that the drink tasted a little too strongly of elderflower liqueur. The taste of the elderflower liqueur almost buried the taste of the limoncello. I had forgotten that I had finished my bottle of St Germain, and was using an Italian elderflower liqueur that had a much stronger floral taste than St Germain.

For my second experiment the following night, my goal was to cut the floral taste of the Italian elderflower liqueur. I could either do that by cutting back on the elderflower liqueur or by amping up the limoncello. I decided to increase the limoncello because I remembered the drink at the restaurant looking cloudier. So the second recipe I tried was 1 ounce elderflower liqueur, 1 ounce limoncello, and approximately 3 ounces prosecco to fill the glass. Of course, there was just a little bit of prosecco left at the bottom of the bottle, so I drank that unadorned. This drink was slightly cloudier than the first, and looked more like what I had at brunch. The sweetness of the Italian elderflower liqueur almost exactly balanced the alcoholic bite of the local small batch limoncello. So the ratio between the two liqueurs was correct.

However, the dryness of the prosecco was completely absent. If I wanted to taste the prosecco more, I could conduct a third experiment – and possibly a fourth experiment - where I scaled down the liqueurs to ¾ ounce each or ½ ounce each and used more prosecco. Unfortunately, I’m so accustomed to using my prosecco to mix in drinks that the prosecco that I purchase doesn’t necessarily have the best stand-alone flavor. So I opted to forego the additional experiments and stick with the 3:1:1 prosecco:elderflower liqueur:limoncello ratio.

The Verdict

Recipe testing to reinvent the Morning Glory was fun! I usually don’t try to recreate drinks or food that I’ve had in restaurants, so this was a very interesting exercise in taste and memory for me. And even if I do talk with the bartender one day and learn that his recipe is radically different than mine, I still may stick with my recipe because it is what I like. And that is what matters!