Sidecar

By , June 21, 2003

If you ever want to bring a bewildered stare to the face of a bartender, you’ve but to order a sidecar. You’re guaranteed to get one of two reactions:

Reaction 1:

“Ummm, are you sure you don’t want something a little more, uhh, modern?”

Reaction 2:

“What the hell is a sidecar?”

More often than not, it’s reaction two that one gets. Regardless, the sidecar is a great drink, and well worth the effort of obtaining.

I tend to go through phases with my drinking in which I adopt a drink as my go-to favorite, and for about six months or so it’s what I order when I’m out at a bar. Eventually, a new concoction catches my eye, and I switch drinks. Until a few months ago I was all about the Vieux CarrĂ©, but my current cocktail crush is the aforementioned sidecar.

Sidecar

From what I gather, the earliest recipes for the drink appeared in 1922, making this a Jazz Age original, which, if you know me, is right up my alley. The Ritz Hotel in Paris claims to have invented the drink, but evidence overwhelmingly suggests that it was in fact created by a bartender named MacGarry at London’s Buck’s Club, sometime between 1918 and 1922.

Recipes vary; I’ve tried many variations. The ingredients are always the same, brandy, orange liqueur, lemon juice, and sugar, but the proportion of each is different depending upon the recipe. Below is what I consider to be the ideal ratio of ingredients for a perfect sidecar.

Sidecar

1.75 oz. Comandon VSOP Cognac
1 oz. Cointreau
3/4 oz. Lemon Juice
1/2 oz. Gum Syrup

Stir the lemon juice and gum syrup together, then add remaining ingredients and ice. Shake all ingredients, then strain into cocktail glass with a lightly sugared rim. Garnish with an orange wheel, or an orange twist.

Gum syrup is simple syrup with gum arabic added as a thickening agent. The gum arabic doesn’t affect the flavor of the drink, so you’re fine using regular simple syrup (or even just superfine sugar) in lieu of it, but it does add a silkiness to the drink that improves the overall drinking experience.

The sugared rim simply means dipping the glass into lemon or lime juice, than dusting the outside of the rim with sugar. This will coat the outer rim of the glass (see above photo). Make sure the glass itself is dry, lest the sugar drip along the outside, leaving you with a sticky glass to hold.

Note that some sidecar aficionados disavow the sugared rim, pointing out that it wasn’t until the mid-1930s that such a presentation of the drink became vogue. Call me new-fangled, but I think the sugared rim is part and parcel of what makes a sidecar a sidecar.

Coals to Newcastle!

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