Brandy Sour

Ingredients

oz ml cl
Glass: Highball

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Instructions

Combine the ingredients (except the Soda water) in a chilled Highball glass filled with ice and stir until the drink is sufficiently chilled. Top with the Soda water.

Notes

The brandy sour is a mixed alcoholic cocktail considered the unofficial national cocktail of Cyprus. While other forms of the brandy sour cocktail exist, the Cypriot variety is a distinct mixture, which only shares the basic brandy and lemon flavourings with other variants. Both brandy and lemons are among Cyprus's major exports, and both have distinctive Cypriot characteristics.

Cocktail brandy produced in Cyprus is typically less strongly flavoured than cognac or armagnac, and most brands have a caramel-biased aftertaste balance. Cyprus also produces distinctive, yellow-green coloured, bitter lemons — used by British author Lawrence Durrell for the title for his autobiographical novel Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. These lemons are used locally to produce a bitter-sweet lemon cordial, which forms the sour and bitter base for the brandy sour cocktail.

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Brandy Sour origin story

The Cypriot brandy sour style was developed following the introduction of the first blended brandy made on Cyprus, by the Haggipavlu family, in the early 1930s. The cocktail was developed at the Forest Park Hotel, in the hill-resort of Plátres, for the young King Farouk of Egypt, who often stayed at the hotel during his frequent visits to the island. The brandy sour was introduced as an alcoholic substitute for iced tea, as a way of disguising the Muslim monarch's preference for Western-style cocktails. The drink subsequently spread to other bars and hotels in the fashionable Platres area, before making its way to the coastal resorts of Limassol, Paphos and Kyrenia, and the capital Nicosia.

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