🥃 Cointreau

Cointreau is the French orange liqueur behind the Margarita and the Sidecar. It comes from Angers and is bottled at 40% vol. The house was founded in 1849 by Adolphe Cointreau, and in 1885 Édouard Cointreau created the crystal-clear liqueur from sweet and bitter orange peels that still carries the name. ¹² Today it belongs to the Rémy Cointreau group. ³

A family recipe. Adolphe, an Angers confectioner, started with local fruit liqueurs such as guignolet; his brother Édouard-Jean joined in 1856, and orange liqueur first appeared in the brothers' recipe books in 1857. ¹ After years of trials, Édouard Cointreau created in 1885 a balanced, crystal-clear liqueur that the house calls three times more concentrated in flavour and less sweet than the liqueurs of the time, and registered the brand and its square bottle at the commercial court of Angers. ¹

Oranges from five countries. Sweet orange peels come from the Seville region of Spain, Ghana, Senegal and Brazil, bitter orange peels from Brazil and Tunisia; fresh sweet peels are macerated for several weeks before distillation. ⁷ The oranges are peeled by hand and the peels dried in the sun for three to five days until they reach 11% moisture. ⁶ The sugar is beet sugar, and the neutral alcohol is made from beets from northern France. ⁷⁸

How it is distilled. The peels are rehydrated overnight in copper column stills with alcohol, sugar and water, and in the morning distillation begins; only the heart, with the strongest aromas, is kept. ⁶ The distillery runs 19 custom copper alembics, and since 2016 the recipe has been guarded by Master Distiller Carole Quinton. ⁶¹

In the glass. The liqueur is perfectly clear in an amber bottle and turns opalescent when mixed, a sign of the high concentration of orange essence; the producer counts more than 40 aroma notes. ² Per 100 ml it has 22 g of sugars and 309 kcal; a 30 ml serving has 6.6 g of sugar and 93 kcal. The producer says it is gluten-free, sulphite-free and suitable for vegans. ⁸

Liqueur or triple sec? Édouard Cointreau registered the liqueur in 1885 as Cointreau Triple Sec, a name the house later dropped; it calls triple sec a generic term for any orange spirit, without a legal definition. ⁹ In EU law Cointreau is a liqueur: at least 15% vol. and at least 100 g of sweetening per litre. ⁴ With 22 g per 100 ml, about 220 g per litre, it is more than twice that minimum. ⁸

Cocktails. According to the house, the first Sidecar recipes with Cointreau appeared in 1922, the Margarita was created in Acapulco in 1948 by Margaret Sames, and in 1988 Toby Cecchini made the Cosmopolitan in New York. ¹ In the International Bartenders Association recipes the Margarita takes 20 ml of triple sec with tequila and lime, the Sidecar 20 ml with cognac and lemon, the White Lady 30 ml with gin and lemon, and the Cosmopolitan names Cointreau itself, 15 ml. ^10121311

Advertising and family. In 1898 Nicolas Tamagno drew the Pierrot Cointreau mascot, and an operator of the Lumière brothers shot a film advertisement with him. ¹ The distillery in Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou opened in 1972, and in 1989 Cointreau merged with the cognac house Rémy Martin to form Rémy Cointreau, headquartered in Paris. ¹³ Besides L'Unique, the house now makes Citrus Spritz with French white wine and canned Cocktail Twists. ¹

Why it matters to you. At 40% vol. Cointreau is as strong as most whiskies or vodkas, and a 30 ml serving adds 93 kcal and 6.6 g of sugar. ²⁸ A Margarita or Sidecar combines it with another spirit, so the glass holds far more alcohol than its size suggests. ¹⁰¹² The WHO stresses that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. ⁵