Brandy Daisy
A forgotten 19th-century classic: cognac sharpened with lemon juice, sweetened with orange curaçao, and brightened with a splash of soda.
Ingredients
- 2 oz cognac
- 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice
- 0.5 oz orange curaçao
- 0.25 oz grenadine
- Soda water, to top
- Lemon wheel, to garnish
Instructions
- 1Add cognac, lemon juice, curaçao, and grenadine to a shaker with ice.
- 2Shake until well chilled and strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
- 3Top with a splash of soda and garnish with a lemon wheel.
Origin & Story
The Daisy format — spirit, citrus, and a sweetener with a botanical character — was one of the foundational cocktail templates of the Victorian era. Jerry Thomas documented the Brandy Daisy in his 1876 book, and the format directly begat the Margarita: when bartenders applied the Daisy template to tequila sometime in the 1930s or 1940s, they substituted lime for lemon and gave it the Spanish name for daisy — Margarita.
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