Fancy Brandy Cocktail – Jerry Thomas

Brandy Cocktail

Three or four dashes of gum syrup

Two or three dashes of bitters

One wineglass of brandy

One or two dashes of curacao

Squeeze lemon peel; fill one third full of ice and stir with a spoon

Fancy Brandy Cocktail

This drink is made the same as the brandy cocktail, except that it is strained in a fancy wineglass, and a piece of lemon peel thrown on top, and the edge of the glass moistened with lemon.

This is the first two parts of another triptych cocktail, the final part of which I’ll do at a later stage. I like that the drink becomes ‘fancy’ merely by swapping glassware, and adding lemon oil around the edge of the glass, I guess this is no different to a pretty dress and makeup.

We’re heading off to see Lady Windemere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde tonight, after another pizza based dinner at Goat. I think before we planned on opening Goat, despite my love of pizza, I’d eat it once every 2-3 months. A regular week at Goat probably sees 5-6 pizza based meals, which is thankfully balanced by the insanely stair filled venue we have.

The play was excellent, Jennifer Saunders was in a key role, and like all Oscar Wilde plays, it was a lot of fun, with a firm line on morality just under the surface. I like to think Oscar would’ve consumed one or two of the Fancy brandy Cocktails, although he was probably more interested in the ‘Improved Brandy Cocktail’ with its absinthe.

The drink itself is a good one, basically an old fashioned made with Brandy served in a cocktail glass. I used Cointreau instead of Curacao for an orange liqueur, and at ‘two dashes’ it adds less flavour than an orange twist in an old fashioned, but it does complement the Brandy (Hennessy VS) nicely. This is a great anytime of the day drink, when you want something a little stronger, and like me don’t like the dregs of an old fashioned because of the dilution from the ice.