Rating: 15/23 N: Sweet, light fruit with mineral creek water and something a tad bitter. The fruits are red like strawberry and cherry. Not a ton is going on here and it comes across as a bit watered down, but also composed of somewhat low-quality flavors. P: Watery, sweet fruit (Welch's strawberry gummies (which are ironically flavored with multiple fruits, none of which are strawberry)), with a lot of generic herbal bitterness behind it. At moments it borders on both floral flavors and char, but the bordering is very slight. None of the flavors are very good and they don't come together well either. It's also quite watery. And somehow I get some of the alcohol in here too even though it's only 11% ABV. The only hope for this is something along the lines of a spritzer or maybe some other sort of cocktail that works well with this kind of lightness. F: Bitter with a bit of a red food coloring aspect coming in. There's some sweetness from the red fruits, but not a ton. It's an unpleasant finish. - Conclusion - Everything about this liqueur is unpleasant. It isn't the worst thing ever, but it's looking at an 8 or 9 neat. I was disappointed by Campari, but this is so much worse. I thought that this would be good with gin, but the combination clashes. It's weirdly terrible. Rye, on the other hand, goes really nicely with this (excluding Copper Fox, because obviously). It's actually much nicer with rye than it is alone. To what extent it improves the rye, I'm not sure. Whiskey novices would probably appreciate the combination though. Bourbon also works pretty well. Mixing this with Buffalo Trace oddly makes a cocktail that is sweeter than either of the two ingredients. Old Forester Signature works especially well. Rum works too, from the dryish Appleton Estate 12 to the super sweet Ron Diplomatico. Blanco tequila didn't work so well, but in a big surprise twist, a few varieties of scotch from Sir Edwards 12 to Pure Scot Virgin Oak to Lagavulin Quarter Cask worked pretty well! Sir Edwards is actually likely the most controversial because its oiliness doesn't totally go with the Aperol profile. Well, I did also try Ardbeg Uigy and it really didn't work with Aperol. OK, so not a scotch, but Corsair Wildfire's barbecue quality fits really well with Aperol's sweet fruitiness. It's one of the combinations to really take note of (well, except that Corsair Wildfire is out of production). So my surprising conclusion at the end of this is that Aperol goes well in cocktails with a lot of spirits, but not the ones I would have expected. And personal preference starts to sneak in here too. I would generally prefer to have the spirits that I found Aperol goes will with neat, which doesn't make me feel a need to stock it. Yet it's an easy way to add some nice sweetness and fruitiness to make a challenging drink a bit more palatable for a newcomer. Holy cow - I have no idea how to rate this. I guess I'd better bias on the side of making an informed cocktail since that's the best it can be that is also controllable. I actually find this to be quite superior to Campari in a lot of cocktails. I'm talking about ad-hoc cocktails, but the outcome is still a much better drinking experience (at least when a mildly refreshing cocktail is appropriate). This wrinkle makes scoring difficult. Campari has a couple of cocktails that it's essentially in, but I'm more confident that sitting there with a bottle of Aperol and whatever else I would be able to craft a good cocktail than if I were stuck with a bottle of Campari. OK, after lots and lots of soul-searching here (and side-by-siding) my conclusion is that although this often improves spirits it is mixed with, some degrade in quality a bit and the improvements to good spirits are fairly small (I didn't dare try mixing it with great spirits). Additionally, I didn't find a spirit that I thought was better mixed with this than with Amaro Montenegro. Admittedly, I stuck to rye and bourbon for this comparison portion, but I still feel like this is not as good of a mixer as Amaro Montenegro, even as a spritzer (the Aperol classic). Honing in on a numeric rating, I was looking in the 14 to 16 range. It's not nearly a 14 neat, but this is obviously a mixer. When mixed with many spirits, this causes an immediate improvement, so it isn't like this is just good in one cocktail. Still, I don't see it raising anything to terrific heights. I think 15 to 16 is the most reasonable grade for this. I think 15 is the most reasonable. Every once in a while, I go back to this and find concoctions in which Campari is better, but for the most part this is the clear winner. It's just that in most of the standard use cases this is worse. OK, I'm considering a 14 or even a 13 now, but I think I'll stick with that 15. In the end, Aperol's greatest strength is that it's light and a bit tropical, but that is also its greatest weakness. It's just very situational.