Brandy &amp; Cognac Cocktails

Cognac, orange liqueur and lemon in balance — the template for every brandy sour. Bright, warming and elegant.

Jack Rose

Apple brandy, lemon and grenadine — an American classic the color of a rose. Fruity, tart and criminally underrated.

Pisco Sour

Peru’s national drink: pisco, lime and sugar shaken to a froth with egg white, finished with a few drops of bitters. Silky and sharp.

Between the Sheets

A Sidecar with rum: cognac, white rum, orange liqueur and lemon. Bright, boozy and roaring-twenties.

StrongStirredSpirit-forward

Stinger

Cognac and crème de menthe over one large cube — a cool, minty after-dinner classic in just two ingredients.

StrongStirredSpirit-forward

French Connection

Cognac and amaretto over ice — nutty, warming and effortless. Two ingredients, all class.

MediumBuilt in glassSparkling

Champagne Cocktail

A sugar cube soaked in bitters under a glass of champagne, with a cognac lift — the oldest of the bubbly classics. Pure occasion.

StrongStirredSpirit-forward

Brandy Old Fashioned

Wisconsin’s house drink: brandy in place of whiskey, with sugar, bitters and fruit. Softer and fruitier than the original.

Metropolitan

Brandy takes the Manhattan's chair, with sweet vermouth and a couple of dashes of bitters behind it. Rounder and more grape-forward than the rye version, softer through the finish, and easier to drink at the wrong hour of the afternoon.

Corpse Reviver #1

The older, spirituous Corpse Reviver: cognac and apple brandy stiffened with sweet vermouth. Rich, warming and bracing.

Japanese Cocktail

One of the oldest cocktails on record: brandy sweetened with almondy orgeat and bittered with a couple of dashes. Simple and elegant.

Brandy Crusta

The ancestor of the Sidecar: brandy with orange liqueur, maraschino and lemon in a sugar-rimmed glass. Refined and citrus-bright.

The Ritz

StrongShakenSparkling

Dale DeGroff’s showpiece: cognac, orange liqueur and maraschino shaken with lemon, then floated with champagne. Luxurious and layered.

Saratoga

A brandy-and-rye Manhattan with a double dose of vermouth — rich, spirituous and old-world elegant.

Widow's Kiss

A rich autumnal classic: apple brandy fortified with both Chartreuse and Bénédictine. Sweet, herbal and warming — a dessert in a glass.

StrongBuilt in glassSpirit-forward

Harvard

Cognac and sweet vermouth in a two-to-one ratio, which on its own would be a heavy, wine-dark sipper. Thirty milliliters of soda changes that. It lifts the aromatics and thins the texture just enough to make this something you drink before dinner rather than after.

East India

Raspberry in a cognac drink sounds like a mistake until you notice how little of it there is. Four milliliters, a splash of orange liqueur and a couple of dashes of bitters, and the brandy comes out rounder and more perfumed without ever tasting fruity.

Star Cocktail

Apple brandy where the whiskey would be, sweet vermouth in equal measure and bitters holding the seam together, making a Manhattan that tastes of orchard fruit and baking spice rather than grain.

Applejack Rabbit

Honey does the sweetening, which is why this doesn't taste like any apple sour you've had before. It's thicker on the tongue and faintly waxy, in a good way. Two citrus juices split the acid so nothing ever sharpens to a point.

Brandy Sour

Whatever brandy is in the cupboard will make this, which is most of the appeal. Lemon and sugar do what they always do, and the spirit brings fruit and warmth where a whiskey version would bring grain and oak.

StrongBuilt in glassSparkling

Chicago

Cognac and a splash of orange liqueur, bittered, then filled with champagne and served over ice in a wine glass. Warmer and more assertive than a Champagne Cocktail, and it lasts a good deal longer in the hand.

Bosom Caresser

Cognac with orange liqueur and a spoon of grenadine, no citrus anywhere to cut it. Thirty milliliters of sweet against 45 of brandy makes a round, faintly red drink that wants a small glass and a very cold one.

Pisco Punch

The lost drink of Gold Rush San Francisco: pisco with pineapple and lemon. Bright, boozy and mysteriously moreish.

Brandy Fix

StrongStirredTropical

Fixes are sours built in the glass rather than shaken, with the spirit, lemon and sugar poured straight over crushed ice and stirred up from the bottom. Maraschino is the only ornament here, four milliliters of it, doing more for the smell than the taste.

Fish House Punch

A colonial Philadelphia punch scaled to one glass: cognac and dark rum with peach, lemon and sugar. Historic and dangerously smooth.

Deauville

Half the cognac in a Sidecar handed over to apple brandy, which turns a citrus drink into an orchard one. Lemon still cuts, orange liqueur still sweetens, but the finish is baked apple and oak.

Honeymoon

Bénédictine is the whole personality of this one. Fifteen milliliters against apple brandy reads as honey and dried herbs, with lemon stopping the sweetness from settling in. Push the liqueur higher and you get syrup.

Brandy Daisy

Older than its vodka cousin by the better part of a century, and it shows in how the grenadine sits on brandy's own fruit rather than filling a hole. Lemon keeps it upright. A little orange liqueur ties the ends together.

Brandy Milk Punch

MediumStirredCreamy

New Orleans drinks this at eleven in the morning without apologizing for it. Brandy, whole milk and sugar, served cold enough to fog the glass, with a texture nearer melted ice cream than cocktail. Skim milk makes it thin and joyless.

MediumBuilt in glassSparkling

Champagne Pick-Me-Up

Cognac, orange juice and a little grenadine on their own would be a soft, fruity brandy drink. Sixty milliliters of champagne over the top dries it out and gives it lift. Pick-me-up meant a morning drink, and this one still behaves like one.

Metropole

Brandy where a Martini keeps gin, cut fifty-fifty with dry vermouth, which sounds like a compromise and isn’t. Orange bitters pull the fruit forward and a dash of aromatic bitters leaves bark and clove on the finish. Winey and warm, and drier than the Harvard it sits next to.

LightBuilt in glassHighball

Cognac Highball

Two and a half parts soda to one of cognac, over as much ice as the glass will take. Carbonation does something useful to brandy, thinning its syrupy weight and pushing the dried-fruit and vanilla notes forward.

MediumBuilt in glassHighball

Pisco Collins

Pisco Sour without the egg white, stretched with soda and served long. The grape spirit's floral, slightly waxy character reads much more clearly here than it does under a foam cap, and the build drops about three steps.

Brandy Cobbler

StrongStirredTropical

The original cobbler done on brandy: spirit, sugar and orange over crushed ice. Genteel, low-effort and lovely on a warm afternoon.

Champs-Élysées

A cognac sour lifted with herbal green Chartreuse — like a Sidecar that went to finishing school. Complex and elegant.

Depth Bomb

October drinking, this one. Apple brandy and cognac at equal parts, with lemon and grenadine dosed in dashes rather than measures, so what looks like a sour on paper lands much nearer the spirit end. The orange slice on top oversells how gentle it is.

Olympic

Orange twice over: liqueur for the perfume, fresh juice for the body, wrapped around cognac in equal thirds. Rounder and gentler than a Sidecar, since juice never bites the way straight lemon does.

Green Room

More vermouth than brandy, and that ratio is the whole drink: a light, winey aperitif with cognac warmth underneath and a few drops of orange liqueur doing the seasoning. Dry, but not austere.