A crisp, brandy-based sour, the Sidecar sets the spirituous warmth of cognac against bright lemon, with orange liqueur rounding the edges and lending a soft, bittersweet perfume. Shaken hard and served up in a chilled coupe, often behind a sugared rim, it drinks tart and bracing at first, then finishes long and warm — the Brandy Crusta's frame of cognac, citrus and orange, pared down to its essentials.
Garnish: Sugar Rim, Lemon Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine the cognac, triple sec, and lemon juice in a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until thoroughly chilled.
strain
Fine-strain into a chilled coupe (rim the glass with sugar beforehand if desired).
garnish
Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
The Sidecar reached print in 1922 in two bartending guides, one by Robert Vermeire and one by Harry MacElhone, yet nobody has settled who first mixed it, or whether that happened in London or Paris as the First World War ended. Vermeire and the early printings of MacElhone's book point to Pat MacGarry of Buck's Club in London, later printings name MacElhone himself, Embury's account gives it to an unnamed American army captain in Paris whose motorcycle sidecar supplied the name, and the journalist McIntyre put forward the expatriates Erskine Gwynne and Basil Woon. The early French recipes used equal measures of all three ingredients and the Savoy Cocktail Book of 1930 doubled the brandy, while the IBA, which counts it among its Unforgettables, now sets an official build that falls between those two schools.