Cocktails You Have Never Seen Before
Three Cognac Cocktails Nobody Has Made Yet
Three cocktails that do not yet exist, invented around a table in Cognac town one evening.
It started one evening in Cognac town. A few of us from the Cognac Expert team were at a place we like for late dinners and slow conversations, and somebody pointed out that the cognac cocktail list almost everywhere is the same six drinks. Sidecar, Sazerac, Vieux Carré, the occasional Stinger when a bar wants to seem adventurous. Lovely drinks, all of them, and all decades old.
When somebody does try to put something new on a menu, it usually involves a bottle of LOUIS XIII and a small mortgage. The interesting middle ground, drinks that take the Charente seriously without costing four figures, sits empty.
So we decided to invent some. Three new cocktails, fully inspired by the Charente, the region the cognac actually comes from. Oysters from the coast, hay from the summer fields, ceps from the oak forests where the barrels get toasted. Drinks that do not yet exist, pulled from a place that does.
We sat down and invented them. We tasted, we argued, we adjusted, we started over a few times. The three recipes you will find below are the ones that survived the evening.
Max likes to point out that he has come a long way from sipping his first “cognac tonic” during a hunt with his dad, somewhere in the Charente woods, holding a thermos cup. These three cocktails are a bit more advanced. They are also, in a way, the same idea grown up: cognac plus something from the land it comes from.
The three follow one quiet theme. Sea, hayfield, forest.
One. The Sea.
Marais Salé
Cognac, oyster brine, samphire, fig leaf oil, verjus
Why this one
Drive an hour north of Cognac and you reach the salt marshes of Île de Ré and Marennes-Oléron, where oysters grow at the edge of the Atlantic and samphire pushes up through the mud. The local kitchen has been pairing those two with eau-de-vie for three centuries. The local bartender, somehow, never has.
Savoury cognac cocktails barely exist. The closest reference we found is the Prairie Oyster from around 1900, which is a hangover cure, not a drink anyone orders twice. We wanted something cleaner. A briny, mineral, herbaceous coupe that tastes the way the coast smells at low tide.
Recipe
- 50 ml cognac VSOP
- 15 ml oyster brine and samphire reduction (blanch samphire 30 seconds, blend with strained Marennes oyster liquor, fine strain)
- 10 ml verjus blanc
- 5 ml fig leaf oil (warm olive oil infused with fresh fig leaves, then strained)
- 2 drops celery bitters
- Smoked Île de Ré sea salt half rim
- One fresh samphire tip, floated
Stir over block ice for twenty seconds. Fine strain into a chilled coupe with a smoked salt half rim. Float the samphire on top.
Tasting note. Oyster shell on the nose. Dry cognac fruit in the middle, then the verjus does its work and pulls everything tight. Samphire is the last thing you taste, and it stays.
Two. The Hayfield.
Foin d’Été
Pineau des Charentes, cognac, clarified hay milk, chamomile, acacia honey
Why this one
Built around Pineau des Charentes, the quiet sibling of cognac. Pineau is made by mixing fresh grape juice with eau-de-vie and aging the result in oak for at least a year. It tastes like very old fruit. Bartenders outside the region almost never use it.
Foin d’Été is what late June smells like inside a Charentais barn. Hay drying in the loft, dairy from the cows in the field next door, chamomile growing along the road. We wanted to put that smell in a glass without making it twee.
The trick is clarified hay milk. Warm whole milk gets infused with lightly toasted meadow hay, then split with a little lemon juice. The curds catch all the cloudiness on the way out, and what is left is a clear, slightly amber liquid that tastes of hot summer fields. We could not find anyone else who had done this with Pineau.
Recipe
- 60 ml Pineau des Charentes blanc
- 30 ml cognac VS
- 20 ml clarified hay milk (see method below)
- 10 ml chamomile syrup
- 5 ml raw acacia honey, dissolved in warm water 1:1
- Expressed lemon thyme oil
- One dried chamomile flower, floated
Clarified hay milk. Heat 250 ml whole milk to 60 degrees. Add a small handful of clean, lightly toasted meadow hay. Steep twenty minutes, then strain. Add 50 ml fresh lemon juice and stir gently until the milk splits. Strain through a coffee filter until the liquid runs completely clear. You will get about 200 ml.
To build. Stir all ingredients gently over one large clear ice cube in a heavy bottomed tumbler. Express lemon thyme oil over the top. Float the chamomile flower.
Tasting note. Warm hay on the nose. Soft fruit from the Pineau, the cognac just behind it, the milk holding everything in a creamy line, and chamomile drifting through the finish like a window left open.
Three. The Forest.
Forêt Brûlée
Brown butter washed cognac XO, cep and toasted hazelnut syrup, black walnut bitters, smoked oak
Why this one
Cognac ages in oak from the forests of Limousin and Tronçais. Before the staves go into the barrel, the cooper toasts them over an open fire. In autumn, those same forests are full of ceps, walnuts and oak smoke. The drink puts all of that into an old fashioned glass.
Cep mushroom in a cocktail is not a new idea on its own; a few experimental bars in London and Tokyo have used dried porcini in syrups. None of them, as far as we could find, paired it with cognac XO, brown butter and oak. The brown butter wash is the part that makes it work: it softens the XO and adds a savoury weight without making the drink heavy.
Recipe
- 60 ml brown butter washed cognac XO (see method below)
- 10 ml cep and toasted hazelnut syrup (see method below)
- 3 dashes black walnut bitters
- 1 short spray of smoked oak tincture (charred Limousin oak chip in neutral spirit, two weeks)
- Wide orange peel, expressed and discarded
- One dehydrated cep crisp on the rim
Brown butter wash. Brown 50 g unsalted butter in a pan until it smells like hazelnut. Stir the warm butter into 500 ml cognac XO in a sealed container. Leave at room temperature for two hours, then freeze overnight. Lift off the solid fat cap. Fine strain twice. The cognac picks up the butter flavour and most of the fat goes in the bin.
Cep and hazelnut syrup. Simmer 100 ml water with 100 g demerara sugar, a small handful of dried porcini and 30 g toasted hazelnuts for ten minutes. Off the heat, steep thirty minutes. Strain.
To build. Stir thirty turns over a king ice cube in a heavy crystal old fashioned glass. Express the orange peel, discard. Rest the cep crisp on the rim.
Tasting note. Forest floor on the nose, then toasted hazelnut. The XO comes through dark and round, the butter softening its edges, walnut bitters sharpening them again. The smoked oak shows up at the end like a curl of woodsmoke from somebody else’s chimney.
One small caveat
We say nobody has made these before because we cannot find them. The web is large and bartenders are inventive, so it is entirely possible that somewhere, someone has already poured a Marais Salé in a tiny bar we have never heard of. If that is you, write to us. We would like to compare notes.
Otherwise, the recipes are yours. Try them, change them, ignore them, send us photos. A bottle of Pineau des Charentes is the only ingredient you may have to source from a specialist shop. Everything else you can find in a good market and a bit of patience.
Three landscapes, three glasses, one bottle of cognac you already own.
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