Brandy Cocktail

The original template for stirred brandy drinks, dating to the 1860s. Simple, elegant, and spirit-forward.

The Brandy Cocktail is the ur-form of the American cocktail — the application of the foundational four-ingredient formula to brandy, which was the dominant American cocktail spirit through the mid-19th century. The first known published definition of the word cocktail appeared on May 13, 1806, in the Balance and Columbian Repository newspaper in Hudson, New York: a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters. In 1806, the spirit most likely to appear in that formula in an American bar was brandy — either imported cognac or domestic apple or peach brandy — rather than the bourbon that later became synonymous with the Old Fashioned format. Brandy's dominance in American cocktail culture reflected both the country's trade relationships and its domestic production: Madeira, cognac, and other imported brandies were the prestige spirits of the Founding generation, while applejack and peach brandy were the most widely produced domestic spirits in the agricultural states of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Upper South. Bourbon's rise to national prominence through the second half of the 19th century gradually displaced brandy from its position as the default American cocktail spirit, but the Brandy Cocktail preserved the original formula intact: spirit, sugar, bitters, and a dash of water, stirred over ice and garnished with citrus.