Brandy in the Shaker: Cognac, Applejack and Pisco

An old mixing spirit that is not used much

Cognac and its relatives have everything a cocktail needs, yet their comeback never quite arrives. Tristan Stephenson points to an odd split: Cognac is made and run by old houses in large châteaux and bought by young people in nightclubs, so the people it is marketed to are not the ones who drink it. A home bartender can ignore all that and simply enjoy a spirit that was among the original mixing spirits of mid-19th-century America.

Cognac and vermouth: the Harvard

The Harvard sits in the same family as the Manhattan and the Rob Roy: a dark spirit, vermouth and bitters. It first appeared in print in George J. Kappeler’s 1895 book Modern American Drinks, with equal parts brandy and Italian vermouth plus seltzer. Stephenson finds that too much vermouth and too much fizz, and stirs a drier version of 50 ml Cognac, 20 ml vermouth, a splash of water and two dashes of Angostura bitters. The water matters: this is a drink that gains from a little extra dilution and does not need to be ice cold.

Leather and tobacco: the Fox Club

His Fox Club takes the Harvard and ages it in a bota, the Spanish goat-leather wineskin traditionally sealed with juniper or pine resin. The rules are those of barrel ageing: a strong drink pulls more flavour from the container than wine or water would, so the leather and resin come through quickly. The remedy is to blend aged and unaged cocktail until the balance is right. A little tobacco liqueur from the chemist-turned-distiller Ted Breaux adds the smoking-room note.

Applejack and the Jack Rose

Applejack is the American cousin of Calvados, but it is not distilled. Hard cider is frozen and thawed, and only the first, strongest liquid to run off is kept; the cycle is repeated until the spirit passes 40 per cent. It is a simple process, and also a risky one, because nothing removes the harsh higher alcohols that a pot still would strip out. The Jack Rose, applejack with lemon and grenadine, was first mentioned in the National Police Gazette on 22 April 1905 and was later named one of the ‘Six Basic Drinks’ by David A. Embury in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948). Embury’s version uses less lemon and grenadine so the applejack can show through.

For the Jaquemot, Stephenson freeze-distils farmhouse cider at home, finishes it in a small oak cask and mixes it with a homemade raspberry and blackberry syrup, shaken into a foamy autumn sour.

Pisco and the Pisco Sour

Peru and Chile each claim pisco and its famous sour. The first recipe that resembles the drink, an egg white, a glass of pisco, sugar and a few drops of lime, is in a Peruvian cookbook from 1903. The decisive step was probably taken in Lima at Morris’ Bar, opened by the American businessman Victor Morris in 1916, where Angostura bitters came to be dashed over the foam. Stephenson’s view is that pisco is unusual among spirits: where most lose their character against acidity, its winey nature seems to thrive on lime and the silky egg white.

His Tiger’s Milk goes a step further. It borrows the idea of the Peruvian hangover drink made from ceviche marinade and rebuilds it as a cocktail with pisco, quinoa milk, key lime, lemon balm, a little katsuobushi and chilli. The milk replaces the egg white, because commercial quinoa milk already contains gelling agents.

Recipes from this chapter

The recipes of the book’s brandy chapter are collected on this site as drafts while we ask for permission to publish them: Harvard, Fox Club, Jack Rose, Jaquemot, Pisco Sour and Tiger’s Milk.