Cherry Bounce

Cherry bounce is best known as an American cordial that is homemade at all socioeconomic levels. Wild black cherries or cultivated sour cherries are crushed together with their pits, sugar, and the alcohol of choice and the mixture is then allowed to mature. The well-to-do colonial New Englander or Virginian opted for rum or brandy; other southerners preferred whiskey. Modern-day Louisiana Cajuns accept only bourbon, while cherry-rich Wisconsin claims vodka as the spirit of choice.

In late-seventeenth-century England, “cherry-bouncer” might refer to any “mingled” drink or punch. By the mid-1700s cherry bounce was often indistinguishable from cherry brandy (although it was sometimes spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg). Indeed, it is probable that the name “bounce” was intended to foil tax collectors: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (and in early twentieth-century rural Maryland), one meaning of “bounce” was to lie or swindle. Before its near-synonymous association with cherries, “bounce” sometimes also referred to other fruit-flavored cordials (e.g., blackberry brandy) and to an eighteenth-century combination of spruce beer and wine drunk by some New Hampshire fishermen.