Sherry Cobbler

America’s Forgotten Favourite

For several decades in the mid-nineteenth century the Sherry Cobbler was the most ordered cocktail in America. Not the most fashionable or the most talked about; the most ordered. Hotels built their reputations on it, bars competed on the quality of their version, and Charles Dickens wrote about it during his American tour in 1842 with barely concealed enthusiasm. It was simply what Americans drank. Its decline was gradual and the reasons are not entirely clear. The rise of the Martini and the whiskey cocktails that followed Prohibition left little room for a low-alcohol sherry drink served with fruit and a straw. The cobbler format survived; the sherry version retreated to the margins. That is cocktail culture’s loss rather than the drink’s.

Jerry Thomas and the Cobbler

Thomas gave the Sherry Cobbler prominent placement in his 1862 Bartenders Guide: sherry, sugar, and orange, served over crushed ice with a straw and garnished with fruit in season. The structure has not meaningfully changed; the drink Thomas made and the drink in this recipe are the same drink. He understood its appeal clearly: accessible, visually impressive, and suited to the long American summers in a way the hot punches and toddies that preceded it were not. Crushed ice was relatively new to the American bar in his era, and the cobbler made the most immediate and obvious use of it.

The Straw

The Sherry Cobbler is widely credited with popularising the drinking straw in America. Crushed ice packed into a glass made drinking directly from the rim impractical, and the flavour of the drink, drawn through a straw that reached below the ice, was different from drinking it any other way. The first straws in American bars were lengths of natural rye grass; paper straws came later. The cobbler changed drinking culture twice over: it popularised sherry in America and it popularised the straw. Not a bad record for three ingredients and a pile of crushed ice.

Choosing the Sherry

Sherry is a fortified wine produced in the Jerez region of southern Spain, and the choice of style changes the cobbler significantly. The official specification splits the base between amontillado and palo cortado, which is a more considered pairing than the drink usually gets: the amontillado brings dry, nutty structure and the palo cortado brings body and a rounder aromatic top that survives the dilution the crushed ice supplies.

Fino is the driest and most delicate: pale, light, and clean, with a fresh, almost saline quality. A fino cobbler is the most refreshing version and suits warm weather and lighter occasions. Amontillado sits between fino and oloroso, aged under flor and then oxidatively: dry, but with a nutty, amber complexity fino does not have, and the best single-sherry starting point for someone new to the format. Oloroso is fully oxidatively aged, producing a richer, darker wine with dried fruit and walnut notes, and an oloroso cobbler is a more substantial drink suited to cooler evenings.

All of them produce a legitimate cobbler. The official split is worth pouring at least once, because it demonstrates something the single-sherry versions cannot: two styles from the same region doing different structural jobs in the same glass.

The Garnish

Thomas was specific about generous fruit presentation; in his era the cobbler’s visual impact was considered as important as its flavour and presentation was part of the bartender’s craft. A glass piled high with fruit, a dome of crushed ice, a straw, a dusting of icing sugar, and a sprig of mint is not excess. It is the format done correctly. Use whatever fruit is in season and looks good: orange slices, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and a sprig of fresh mint, slapped between the palms before placing to release the oils. The icing sugar adds visual appeal and a faint sweetness to the first sip through the straw. The cobbler should look as good as it tastes. That principle has not aged.

Frequently Asked Questions