This sort of settles into the same family of sour first cocktails like the Daiquiri, Margarita and the whiskey sour but this is brandy based. Brandy used to be a staple of the bar, but now brandy is served nearly always neat in restaurants these days. When blended right this is a very classy, quaffable cocktail. You can find versions of this cocktail with lemon or lime juice but I prefer lime juice because I do not find the acidity as aggressive and blends better with the brandy. In the Trader Vic’s Bartender Guide from 1947 the side car was equal parts brandy, Cointreau and lemon juice.
Ingredients
2 oz Brandy (As they are owned by the same company why not Remy Martin VS.)
1 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz Lime Juice
Garnish
Orange twist.
Glassware
5 oz coup
Assembly
Chill a coup. Fill cocktail shaker with ice. Measure and add lime juice, brandy, and Cointreau and shake until chilled. Moisten the glass with a lime wedge and coat half the glass in sugar crystals. Strain into glass coup and garnish.
Suggestions
Brandies are not seeing nearly the interest as Whiskeys or gins in the cocktail revival but virtually every craft cocktail place will have a featured Sidecar or Cablecar or both. Brandy is made from wine, so anywhere there is wine, there can be brandy, but that is also part of the problem. In any distillation for spirit meant to be aged, it is common to be left with less than 20% of the original volume. Economically that means that If the grapes that went into the brandy could make a $10 bottle then the bottle of brand would need to be sold for $50 to make the same amount of money and that is before aging. The only way brandy makes economic sense is to grow grapes of high yielding crops in areas not suitable for quality wine production. That means that grapes have to be planted and land owned to start a new business so the entry to market is way to high for experimentation. Two quality California brandies are Jepson from Hopland, CA and Germain-Robin also from Mendocino County.