It's the whiskey

I happen to own on DVD the entire five years' worth of Upstairs, Downstairs (my all-time favorite television show), which is set in England in the first decades of the Twentieth Century. A few years ago while going through the whole series again, I noticed the characters were drinking sidecars at one point. I looked it up on the Internet and found that the sidecar was a popular drink around the time of World War I. I had to try it.

A basic sidecar is brandy, triple sec and lemon juice. I made one with Courvoissier, Grand Marnier and lemon juice out of a green bottle (or maybe a yellow plastic lemon-shaped squeeze thing). Despite that, I liked it. A lot.

Then I discovered actual real lemons, squeezed by me and used in place of the "Realemon" lemon juice in the green bottle. It opened a whole new world.

I like my cocktail when I get home from work, or before cooking Sunday supper, or any time I feel like I want one. And I probably drink some sort of side car more often than anything else. My current favorite variation is the Irish Whiskey Sidecar, which I believe I invented, thus:

2 oz Jameson (12-yr-old only)
1 oz Cointreau
1 oz fresh lemon juice

I was out of Jameson 12 a few months back (the stuff is $40 a bottle) and tried making it with Jack Daniels. Now I like Jack Daniels, when I'm in the mood for sour mash whiskey, but it never was quite right. I fooled with the proportions -- less lemon, more Cointreau, less Cointreau, more lemon, although rarely less whiskey -- and I fooled with the proportions some more, but it never was quite right.

And then somebody bought me a bottle of Jameson 12 for Christmas, and I discovered the real truth. It's not the proportions. It's the whiskey.

My second favorite variation, and a close second it is:

2 oz Absolut vodka
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz lemon juice

More Cointreau and/or more lemon overpowers the vodka, that's why the proportions of those items are half what goes in against the Jameson 12. The vodka sidecar took a lot of fooling with the proportions too, but I got it.

Right now, it's a Jameson Sidecar I'm drinking, and I'm loving it. And writing about it.

Too bad somebody isn't here to share it with me. The drink, or the blog. Either one.