Frank Sullivan

A tart Sidecar relative featuring brandy with Lillet, Cointreau, and lemon - quinine bitterness adds sophistication.

The Frank Sullivan Cocktail is a literary-world drink from the Jazz Age, named for the American humorist Frank Sullivan (1892–1976), who became one of The New Yorker magazine's most celebrated regular contributors. Sullivan joined The New Yorker in 1925, the year of the magazine's founding by Harold Ross, and remained associated with it for the rest of his career, contributing the Clichés of the Year piece — a mock interview with a "Cliché Expert" — as an annual Christmas tradition for decades. Sullivan was part of the Algonquin Round Table's broader literary and social circle, and his wit, affability, and prolific output made him a respected figure in New York's writing community through the mid-20th century. Cocktails named for their creators or for famous drinkers of the era — the Hemingway Daiquiri, the Rob Roy for the Scottish outlaw, the Harvey Wallbanger for its fictional surfer — were a common means of lending personality and narrative to a drink. The Sullivan cocktail's formula of brandy, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, and lemon juice reflects the sophisticated palate of the New York literary world: Lillet Blanc, the French aromatized wine produced in Podensac in the Gironde since 1887, provides a delicate, floral, slightly bitter complexity that positions the drink in the same register as the Corpse Reviver No. 2 and other early 20th-century Lillet cocktails.