A spare, bracing digestif of just two ingredients: cognac smoothed and chilled by white crème de menthe, stirred to a cool, mentholated finish. The brandy brings warm fruit and oak while the clear mint liqueur adds a clean sweetness and an icy lift, so the glass drinks crisp and bright rather than cloying.
Garnish: Mint Sprig
Stirred · Coupe · Up
add
Add the cognac and white crème de menthe to a mixing glass filled with ice.
stir
Stir well until thoroughly chilled and properly diluted.
strain
Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, served straight up.
garnish
Optionally garnish with a fresh mint sprig.
No single inventor is on record — the Stinger surfaced in the United States around the 1890s and settled in as a fashionable after-dinner drink among the well-to-do. Its earliest printed forerunner is "The Judge" — brandy, crème de menthe and simple syrup — which appeared in The Flowing Bowl, William Schmidt's book of 1892, while a much-repeated tale crediting Reginald Vanderbilt with creating or popularizing it is treated as urban legend. The drink outlasted Prohibition, when its mint helped cover the harshness of bootleg brandy, and in the years that followed it was sometimes served over crushed ice instead of straight up. Today it holds a place among the IBA's official cocktails.