The Sidecar

, with cognac, curaçao triple sec, and lemon juice, is the most iconic of all cognac cocktails, enduring as a symbol of sophisticated drinking for a century. Its recipe first appeared in print in 1922 in two different cocktail books by London bartenders: Robert Vermeire’s Cocktails: How to Mix Them, published in May, and Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails by Harry McElhone, which came out at the end of the year. See McElhone, Henry “Harry” and Vermeire, Robert. McElhone has this to say about the drink: “This cocktail is very popular in France. It was first introduced in London by MacGarry, the celebrated bar-tender of Buck’s Club” (it is worth noting that McElhone had worked alongside Malachi “Pat” McGarry at the club in its early days). See Mimosa. In the French-language edition of his book, published in Brussels in 1938, Vermeire went on to specify the south of France as the drink’s home. It could have been invented at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, but no proof from the period has yet been found, and its exact origin remains unknown. In any case, in a widely copied 1923 article Frank Meir of the Ritz bar in Paris listed it as the second most popular of the nine cocktails that were “new since the war,” after (McElhone’s) Monkey Gland. See Meier, Frank.

The Sidecar found great favor during the 1920s in European bars, but it was also a popular speakeasy drink in New York and elsewhere in America, serving as a symbol of sophisticated, chic drinking. Adding to its cachet was the practice of Meier’s (as recorded by Lucius Beebe in 1946) of making a luxury Sidecar that cost five US dollars at that time, using the Ritz’s own bottling of a vintage pre-phylloxera cognac from 1865. It has been claimed, not without reason, that this was the beginning of luxury cocktails. (In the early 2000s, when Ritz head bartender Colin Field was exploring the hotel’s cellars, he found two bottles of Ritz Cognac Vintage 1865, which, when he looked under the label, turned out to have been produced by Remy Martin.)There are two main schools of Sidecar mixing, one calling for equal parts of its three ingredients, another for two parts cognac to one each of triple sec and lemon; there are also others that tinker with the proportions in their own ways. Since the 1930s, the drink has often been served in a glass whose rim is frosted with sugar, particularly in the United States.

*Recipe: shake well with ice 45 ml cognac, 22 ml Cointreau or other triple sec, and 22 ml fresh lemon juice. In America, a sugar rim is usually added (preferably superfine sugar).

Beebe, Lucius. The Stork Club Bar Book. New York: Rinehart, 1946.

McElhone, Harry. ABC of Mixing Cocktails. London: Odhams, 1922.

“‘Monkey Gland’ is in full vogue.” New York Herald (Paris ed.), April 26, 1923, 5.

Vermeire, Robert. L’Art du Cocktail. Bruxelles: Imprimerie de l’Office de Publicité, 1938.

Vermeire, Robert. Cocktails-How to Mix Them*. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1922.

By: Fernando CastellonSee McElhone, Henry “Harry”, Vermeire, Robert.See Mimosa.See Meier, Frank.