Brandy Cocktails

24 recipes

This Field Manual holds 24 recipes built on brandy: 12 cognac and 12 other brandy. Brandy is distilled from fruit, usually grapes, and aged in oak. It is the base of the oldest drinks here.

Cognac is brandy from one region under strict rules, and its weight suits a sidecar or a sazerac where the spirit has to carry sugar and citrus without thinning. Brandy without the appellation covers everything from Spanish solera to apple brandy, and the range is wide enough that the bottle matters more than the category. Age is the reliable guide: the longer it sat in oak, the better it holds a stirred drink and the less it wants shaking.

Base Spirit

Difficulty Level

Brandy Alexander

The Brandy Alexander is equal parts cognac, dark crème de cacao and cream, shaken hard and served up under a heavy grating of nutmeg. It is the definitive dessert cocktail of the

Brandy Crusta

The Brandy Crusta was created by Joseph Santini at his New Orleans bar around 1850 and is widely regarded as one of the first genuinely refined cocktails in American history. It

Brandy Milk Punch

The Brandy Milk Punch is New Orleans keeping the eighteenth century's breakfast habit: brandy shaken cold through sweetened vanilla milk and crested with nutmeg. Milk punch

Brandy Sling (Cold)

The cold brandy sling became possible when ice became widely available in American cities in the mid-nineteenth century. Before that, the sling was served hot. The arrival of

Brandy Sling (Hot)

Before ice was widely available, the sling was a hot drink. Spirit, sugar, hot water, lemon, and nutmeg grated on top. That is the original format and it has not been improved

Champs-Élysées

The Champs-Élysées first appeared in print in the 1927 cocktail book Here’s How, attributed to the anonymous “Barflies and Cocktails” collection published in Paris. The name

Corpse Reviver No. 1

The Corpse Reviver No. 1 appeared in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, presented alongside its more famous sibling as part of a loosely connected family of restorative

Eggnog

Eggnog is the milk punch that armoured up for winter: whole eggs whisked through milk, cream and sugar over a brandy-and-rum floor, the medieval posset’s descendant that colonial

French Connection

The French Connection is the 1970s in a rocks glass: cognac and amaretto over ice, named for the 1971 film that owned the decade’s idea of cool, and built for the era’s

Harvard

The Harvard belongs to the 1890s fashion for naming Manhattan variations after universities: the drink appears in George Kappeler’s 1895 Modern American Drinks alongside its

Horse’s Neck

The Horse’s Neck began as a soft drink. Through the 1890s it was ginger ale over ice with a long spiral of lemon peel draped over the rim, and the peel, hanging down the side of

Jack Rose

The Jack Rose is one of the great pre-Prohibition American classics, documented in bar guides from the early twentieth century. Its base is applejack, the American apple brandy

Japanese Cocktail

The Japanese Cocktail has nothing to do with Japan. Jerry Thomas created it in 1862 at his New York bar, naming it in honour of the Kanrin Maru mission, the first Japanese

Metropole

The Metropole is a brandy martini: cognac and dry vermouth in equal measure, with two dashes of Peychaud's and one of orange bitters. It was the house drink of the Hotel Metropole

Mulled Wine

Mulled wine predates the cocktail by the better part of two millennia. The Romans warmed wine with honey and spice in the pages of Apicius, medieval kitchens ran it through a

Pisco Punch

The Pisco Punch is San Francisco's lost masterpiece: the house drink of the Bank Exchange saloon through the Gold Rush decades, perfected by Duncan Nicol, who served it to Mark

Pisco Sour

The Pisco Sour is a national institution with an American accent. Victor Vaughen Morris, a bartender from Utah who followed the railway money south, opened Morris' Bar in Lima and

Porto Flip

The Porto Flip is a whole egg yolk shaken into port and brandy, and it belongs to a family of drinks that has almost entirely disappeared. A flip in the eighteenth century meant a

Sangria

Sangria is red wine lengthened with fruit, brandy and a little sugar, rested until the flavours marry, and served from a pitcher over ice. The name comes from sangre, blood, for

Sidecar

The Sidecar is one of the great drinks of the years after the First World War, and its paternity has never been settled. It appears in 1922 in both Harry MacElhone’s ABC of Mixing

Stinger

The Stinger is cognac wearing menthol aftershave: brandy and white crème de menthe, stirred or famously shaken, and for the first half of the twentieth century the definitive

Ve.N.To

Ve.N.To is a grappa sour, which is a sentence most people have never had cause to read. It is built on white grappa with lemon, a chamomile honey mix and chamomile cordial, and it

Wassail

Wassail is older than almost anything else in the canon by several centuries, and its name is the toast itself: the Old English wæs hæil, be in good health. The appointed reply

Widow’s Kiss

The Widow’s Kiss is autumn in a coupe and one of the oldest sophisticated drinks in the American canon. George Kappeler printed it in Modern American Drinks in 1895: calvados

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