The Sidecar is a somewhat neglected concoction, being a brandy-based cocktail that doesn’t fit into the common categories of brown, clear and beach drinks. The most important thing is to wet the tip of your martini glass with water before dipping it in sugar and chilling it in the freezer. To make a sidecar, shake:
- 2 oz brandy
- 2 oz triple sec or other orange liqueur
- 1 1/2 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice
The base of a cocktail (brandy, whiskey, gin, vodka, rum or tequila) is a bit like a Kuhnian paradigm that casts an interpretive shadow over whatever else you add to it. If you add lime juice and simple syrup to rum you get a Daiquiri. When you add lime juice and simple syrup to gin, you end up with a Gimlet. Garnishes also provide a gravitational pull of their own. Dry vermouth, gin and olives gives you a martini. Dry vermouth, gin and cocktail onions makes a Gibson. Replace gin with vodka and you end up with either a vodka Martini or a vodka Gibson (emphasizing that vodka, being a clear alcohol like gin, is a mere variation rather than a species change). Gin, sweet vermouth and bitters gives you a Martinez, a drink that the Martini is apparently descended from. Bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters is a Manhattan. Replace the Manhattan’s vermouth with simple syrup and you get an Old-Fashioned. Add mint leaves to this and you have a Mint Julep.
Herodotus tells us that the Persians always deliberated over important issues once drunk and once sober, to ensure they captured all the aspects of the matter with clarity but also with an open mind so that, matatis mutandis, good outcomes were achieved. The surprise is always in how different moods can affect our judgment which we otherwise assume is firm and built on unmoving principles. It is why decisions should never be made in haste or in a moment of high passion. And if we do this anyways, there is much to be said for a process that allows review, so that mistakes made in the moment can be fixed.
But due process, like brandy cocktails, is not currently in vogue, and it is difficult to tell if this is a result of changing perspectives on what justice entails – or if this is merely a momentary passion.