If David Embury is to be believed, mixed drinks fall roughly into two categories - cocktails of the sour type, and those of the aromatic type. The former covers drinks that include - surprise! - a sour element like lemon or lime juice while the latter comprises recipes with some kind of aromatized or fortified wine component, such as vermouth. But I don't think that these two categories have to be mutually exclusive. I don't mean drinks that contain both aromatic elements and sour elements - there are some, most notably the Corpse Reviver - more I think that it is often possible to present both a sour version and an aromatic version of the same drink. There will be differences in the two versions of the drink, but the overall flavor profile will pretty much the same.

I'm going to use a Bramble to illustrate the point. It's a gin-based drink invented by Dick Bradsell in London in the early part of the 1980s.

Bramble

45ml gin
25ml lemon juice
10ml gomme syrup
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a lemon wedge and a couple of blackberries.

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The thing with sour drinks is that they're not actually sour. It's all about that balance between sweet and sour, finding that spot between zingy and refreshing, and avoiding gum-sucking acidity. The immediate hit is something that is going to be lost in the aromatic version, but that doesn't mean that we're going to lose the citrus notes entirely.

Blackberry

50ml gin
15ml dry vermouth
10ml Limoncello
4 kaffir lime leaves
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with cubed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a blackberry and a lime leaf.

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And there we go - complementary sour and aromatic cocktails based on a single flavour profile.