Brandy Scaffa

A powerful room-temperature sipper combining brandy with maraschino and bitters - served neat in the historical scaffa style.

The Brandy Scaffa belongs to the Scaffa category — one of the most historically specific and least-understood drink families in the American cocktail canon. A Scaffa, as defined by Jerry Thomas in his 1862 Bar-Tenders Guide, is a cocktail served at room temperature without any ice or cold dilution. The format represented a surviving trace of pre-industrial American drinking customs from the period before Frederic Tudor's ice trade — pioneered from Boston beginning in 1806 and expanded globally through the 1820s and 1830s — made ice a commercially available commodity in American cities. Before the ice trade, cold drinks were available only seasonally or to those with private icehouses, and the standard assumption was that cocktails were served at the ambient temperature of the bar. The Scaffa preserved this older convention into an era when cold drinks had become both possible and fashionable, positioning room-temperature service as a deliberate choice rather than a default. The brandy Scaffa typically combines cognac with maraschino liqueur and Bénédictine — the 40-botanical herbal liqueur produced in Fécamp, Normandy by the Bénédictine distillery founded by Alexandre Le Grand in 1863 — producing a drink of concentrated sweetness and aromatic depth that the absence of dilution makes even more pronounced. The format's small, concentrated serving suits its post-dinner context; it is a contemplative drink rather than a refreshing one.