Can I use Campari instead of Aperol?

You can, and the original version did. It'll be more bitter, drier, less of a crowd-pleaser. If you like a Negroni and find Aperol a touch sweet, go Campari. Just know you're rebuilding the drink toward its angrier early self, which some of us happen to prefer.

Is there a substitute for Amaro Nonino?

Nonino is the soul of this thing, grappa-based, gentle, with that dried-apricot warmth, so there's no perfect swap. In a pinch a softer amaro like Montenegro will get you in the neighborhood. Avoid the heavy, medicinal amari here. They'll bulldoze the whiskey and turn a balanced sour into cough syrup with a buzz.

What bourbon should I use?

Something with backbone but not a wood bomb. A standard 90-proof bottle does the job. You're not sipping it neat, so don't pour your good stuff. The bourbon's role is to anchor the citrus and the amari, not to win an argument with them.

The Paper Plane: Four Equal Parts and Nowhere to Hide

Four ingredients, three-quarters of an ounce each, no garnish, no theater. The Paper Plane is the rare modern cocktail that earned its keep on equal parts and good taste rather than a backstory about some dead bartender's ghost. It tastes like Aperol's bitter orange got drunk and made friends with bourbon. And it does the hardest thing a cocktail can do: it makes balance look easy.

0.75 ozBourbon

0.75 ozAperol

0.75 ozAmaro Nonino

0.75 ozLemon Juice

Garnish: None

Build it in your shaker. Bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, fresh lemon, all in equal measure, all poured with a little attention because at these proportions there is nowhere to hide a heavy hand. Get one count wrong and the whole thing tilts. Shake it hard over good ice, ten seconds, until the tin frosts and your fingers complain. The dilution matters here. You want that lemon dragged down and rounded, the two amari knit into the whiskey, the texture gone from sharp to silky. Double strain into a chilled coupe so no shard of ice or pulp rides along. No garnish, and resist the urge to add one. The drink is the color of a sunset already. Gilding it would be a confession that you don't trust it.

This is a Daiquiri at heart, and the bone structure proves it. Strip away the names on the bottles and what you have is the complete sour: something tart, something sweet, a base spirit holding the center. Lemon does the work of lime. The two Italian amari, Aperol and Nonino, stand in for simple syrup, sweetening the thing while smuggling in bitterness and herbal depth that plain sugar never could. Bourbon is the spirit. That's the Daiquiri template, the original rum-lime-sugar triangle, wearing a different coat. What keeps the Paper Plane in this family and out of the Daisy camp is that nothing here exists to perfume the drink. There's no liqueur thrown in for aromatic flash the way orange liqueur lifts a Sidecar or maraschino haunts an Aviation. Every ingredient is load-bearing. The same logic runs through the Bee's Knees, the Brown Derby, and the Amaretto Sour. Sour, sweet, strong, balanced. The Paper Plane just splits the duties across four bottles instead of three and lets the math hold it together.

This one is young and honest about it. Sam Ross built the Paper Plane in 2008 for a bar in Chicago, named it after the M.I.A. song that was everywhere that year, and watched it quietly conquer cocktail menus across the planet. Ross already had pedigree. He's the same man behind the Penicillin, which means he understands how to make smoke and citrus behave. The original spec leaned on Campari before the recipe settled on Aperol, a swap that softened the bitterness and pushed the whole drink toward something brighter and more drinkable. That's the part worth respecting. A lot of modern cocktails are exercises in showing off, a parade of obscure bitters and house-made shrubs designed to make you feel stupid for ordering a gin and tonic. The Paper Plane is the opposite. It's a drink built by someone who actually works a bar, who knows that equal parts are easy to remember during a Friday rush and that a cocktail people can't reproduce won't outlive its menu. Two decades on, it has outlived plenty. The genius isn't complexity. It's that four amari-and-whiskey notes that have no business being this harmonious end up tasting inevitable.

Open the Paper Plane recipe card on Speed Pour

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FAQ

Can I use Campari instead of Aperol?: You can, and the original version did. It'll be more bitter, drier, less of a crowd-pleaser. If you like a Negroni and find Aperol a touch sweet, go Campari. Just know you're rebuilding the drink toward its angrier early self, which some of us happen to prefer.
Is there a substitute for Amaro Nonino?: Nonino is the soul of this thing, grappa-based, gentle, with that dried-apricot warmth, so there's no perfect swap. In a pinch a softer amaro like Montenegro will get you in the neighborhood. Avoid the heavy, medicinal amari here. They'll bulldoze the whiskey and turn a balanced sour into cough syrup with a buzz.
What bourbon should I use?: Something with backbone but not a wood bomb. A standard 90-proof bottle does the job. You're not sipping it neat, so don't pour your good stuff. The bourbon's role is to anchor the citrus and the amari, not to win an argument with them.