Swingin’ Brandy Cocktails

Fruit is among nature’s purest, most virtuous wonders—especially when distilled. For those unaccustomed to drinking fruit spirits, just remember that if you can mash it, you can distill it, which makes for a rich variety of cocktail ingredients. These are all fruity in aroma but dry on the palate, and they are all identified as eau de vie or brandy, though we tend to use the former term for the unaged types and the latter for the brown stuff. To further complicate things, brandy by itself usually means aged grape brandy, like cognac, and the apple brandies and so on are forced to explain themselves every time they enter a room. And then you’re supposed to understand that none of these should be confused with the sort of liqueur with brandy in the name, like apricot brandy or blackberry or whatever, as brandy in that case merely means brandy-based. (Sometimes they tell you the brandy used for the base. Often they don’t.) Those drinks have sugar in them and are not the same sort of thing at all. Still with me? Would a drink help?



Mr. Rosewater

• 2 oz cognac
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/4 oz grenadine
• 1/8 tsp rosewater
• 1 1/2 oz soda

Shake all except soda with ice cubes. Strain into a double old fashioned. Add soda and fresh ice cubes.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Now there’s a brandy drink with a familiar brandy. I could’ve used a California one of the same general type but it wouldn’t be cognac. Only brandy from the wine-growing region around Cognac is called cognac, so you know what you’re getting. French brandy, like all agricultural products from France, is departmental, and a handy thing that it is, too.

The other big aged grape spirit in those parts but from the southwest is armagnac. (If French sounds make you nervous, the gn is just like the one in cognac. That both brandy regions should have the same ending is kind of cute.) It’s a similar sort of spirit but from a different department and with a character of its own. Like cognac, armagnac is easy drinking, delicious and good in Sidecar cocktails. In the recipe below, I’ve combined it with a totally different type of brandy, a pear eau de vie. This spirit is known as Poire William or Poire Williams, after the Williams pear, a Bartlett. There’s a very nice liqueur by the same name but it’s not brandy. (We’ll ignore the question of whether it might be a brandy-based pear liqueur.) Also note that the Cointreau in my recipe is a brandy-based orange liqueur, but we never ever call it orange brandy. Sometimes it’s better not to ask and just keep drinking.



Armagnac-Poire Sidecar

• 1 1/2 oz armagnac
• 1/2 oz Poire Williams eau de vie
• 3/4 oz Cointreau
• 3/4 oz lemon juice

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Eau de vie tends to come in pricey half-bottles, but it delivers a fairly concentrated blast of fruit aroma and can be used sparingly in mixed drinks. The fruit spirits combine very nicely for symphonic effects like you get with multiple rums in Tiki. Some fruit brandies are snappy like applejack; others are lush and round like cognac. You can pair them for the best of both brandies.

Williams’ Orchard

I be free to go abroad,
Or take again my homeward road
To where, for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

—William Barnes, My Orcha’d in Linden Lea (Common English version)

Today is the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. My celebratory offering is one I’ve been enjoying for a few days, an apple-pear brandy combo with a little ginger to brighten the winter evenings. The Poire Williams dominates, as the name suggests. For the apple brandy, I had some applejack, which worked fine, though I’d like to try it with Laird’s Bonded—my preference in such things.



Williams’ Orchard

• 2 oz apple brandy
• 3/4 oz Velvet Falernum
• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 1/4 oz Poire Williams

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Pear 75

As you might guess, this is a variation on the classic French 75 that’s made with pear brandy. I like Poire Williams a lot but it’s very assertive, so I tend to use it in conjunction with some other base to keep the pear from becoming too dominant.



Pear 75

• 1 oz Poire Williams eau-de-vie
• 1 oz old tom gin
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1 tsp simple syrup
• brut champagne to fill

Fill an 8-10 ounce glass halfway with crushed ice. Combine all but champagne with ice in a shaker and strain into the prepared glass. Fill with Champagne and stir gently. Lemon twist.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I did two versions: one with crushed ice, one without. I could go either way. The ice one was very cold. The up one was soft and velvety.

Pear Sidecar

I had a great Pear Sidecar at Rams Head in NW Portland that was made from Edgefield Distillery’s own pear brandy. The one I show here combines cognac with a touch of Poire Williams. Feels very French to me for some reason—not just because of the two brandies but there’s just something about pear.



Pear Sidecar

• 1 1/2 oz cognac
• 1/2 oz Poire Williams eau-de-vie
• 3/4 oz Cointreau
• 1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake and strain into an ice cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The Breakfast Cocktail

Rich, elegant, herbal. The housemate and I are of differing views on whether this is best with bitters or without. Good either way, though for me, the bitters adds an astringency that makes it and dries the whole thing down. But I suppose adjusting the ratio of Chartreuse to cognac would cut the sweet a bit while preserving what the housemate calls a roundness. I see his point.

The Breakfast of Champions, as a certain Vonnegut waitress tells us, is the Martini, though Dr Johnson notes that to be a hero, one must drink brandy.



The Breakfast Cocktail

• 1 oz Green Chartreuse
• 1 – 1 1/2 oz cognac
• 1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
• 1 tsp Poire Williams
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 1 dash Bitter Truth Creole Bitters or other aromatic bitters (optional)

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN. FOGGED IN LOUNGE

For an old friend.

Moment’s Notice

I pretty much walked in the door one evening and started grabbing bottles. It’s cool when a drink just happens. The name’s inspired by the John Coltrane composition of the same name from Blue Train. Appropriately, it was the first phrase that came to mind.



Moment’s Notice

• 2 oz gin
• 3/4 oz yellow Charteuse
• 3/4 oz dry vermouth
• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 1/4 oz Poire Williams

Stir with ice cubes and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE