The Spirits #165: The Brandy Sour
Fix me something that isn’t what it seems
~ THE BRANDY SOUR ~
50ml brandy
200ml lemonade (see below)
A good dash of Angostura bitters
Pout the brandy into a highball glass. Add ice and lemonade and bitters and stir. Garnish with a lemon slice and, should you be blessed enough to have one, a lemon leaf.
Some Brandy Sour notes:
1) The recipe comes from the outstanding novella Brandy Sour by the Greek-Cypriot writer Constantia Soteriou. What she doesn’t tell you is that the secret really lies in the lemonade. To make a really first-rate lemonade, you must first zest two top-grade lemons (you know, the larger Amalfi kind that come with leaves attached… though Cypriot lemons would be ideal). Place the zest in a sturdy vessel (I used a standard jam jar) and add approx 80-100g caster sugar. Pound the sugar into the zest with a muddler for a few minutes to create an oleo-saccharum. (Seasoned punch-makers will be familiar with this step). Now squeeze the lemons, add the juice to the oleo-saccharum and stir until the sugar is dissolved (if you’ve used a jar, you can put the lid on and shake). Strain the peels away and dilute with ~500ml fizzy water. You will be stunned at how delicious this is on its own and delighted at how well it goes with brandy.
2) I am confident in saying that Brandy Sour the novel will be equally up your street, for it is a novel told in drink recipes. The Brandy Sour, we learn in the first chapter, was a drink invented for the Egyptian King Farouk by an inspired barman at the Forest Park hotel in Platres, Cyprus, sometime in the 1940s. King Farouk was plagued with troubles both marital and political and said to the barman:
“Fix me something… Fix me something to drink that dosn’t look like a drink, fix me something that doesn’t look like it contains alcohol, fix me something that isn’t what it seems, put in a bit of that good brandy of your that I like so much. Oh and add some lemon too - I like your lemons.”
3) So the barman makes him a brandy lemonade only he adds some additional sour lemons “to remind the king of his sorrows” and Angostura bitters “to make him bitter” and he poured it into a tall glass so it would resemble iced tea. The Brandy Sour would go on to become the Cypriot national cocktail. “It’s a good drink, brandy sour. They say that King Farouk likes it a lot.”
4) Actually I haven’t done it properly. You’re supposed to serve it with a sugar rim to the glass and a maraschino cherry.
5) The rest of the novel is set around a grand hotel and consists of vignettes of the various characters who haunt it as Cyprus moves from British colonial rule via a bloody war into a fractious peace. It captures all this via the drinks they like to drink: the doorman who discovers rosebud tea; the English war photographer who likes a beer; the mayor who brokers a crucial sanitation deal with his Turkish counterpart on the other side and soothes his nerves with spearmint. It was the first novel published by the Foundry imprint and I picked it up at the lovely Heron Books in Clifton. If any of you are headed to Cyprus, I’d say it’s the perfect companion. As for me, it made extremely good company as I waited in A&E with my broken collarbone a few weeks ago.
6) You’ll never guess where I am now though…
✨WELCOME TO THE SPIRITS✨
The neighbourhood bar of the internet
🖊️I am Richard Godwin, journalist by trade…
📚… cocktail writer when I’m skirting deadlines.
🧑🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
📃My full A-Z recipe archive is here.
⚗️The bottles I think you should get in first? Here.
🍾The bottles you should get in next? Here.
🛒A great place to get these bottles is the SPIRITS STORE.
➡️Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.
🏥And here is a list of trusted charities helping people in Gaza.
🍒Here is my favourite poem about maraschino cherries.
📱And if you like The Spirits, please forward this to your friends.
PLAYLIST
Q: Are there enough great songs about lemons to merit a whole playlist?
A: Yes. Lemons even made U2 write a great song.
THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of past playlists.
SOME CABINET POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY
🐿️ Amaretto
🧡 Aperol
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🕊️ Bénédictine
❄️ Brancamenta
☕ Coffee Liqueur
🍌 Crème de Banane
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🫐 Crème de Cassis
🌷 Cynar
🦌 Drambuie
🌸Elderflower Liqueur
🏝️ Falernum
🦅 Fernet-Branca
🌿 Green Chartreuse
🐻 Kümmel
🍒 Maraschino
🌵 Mezcal
🦙 Pisco
🐂 Sherry
🧙♀️ Strega (incorporating Yellow Chartreuse)
🌻 Suze
SHOPPING LIST: I’m not sure what I’m going to make yet but I’m pretty sure it will contain bourbon. Yes, I write this from Louisville, Kentucky, where every other building is literally made from bourbon.
🐎🥃🐎🥃🐎🥃🐎🥃🐎🥃🐎🥃🐎🥃🐎🥃