What apricot brandy should I actually buy?

Look for a bottle labeled apricot liqueur made from real fruit, ideally with some of that bitter almond note from the kernels. Rothman and Winter Orchard Apricot is the bartender default and it works beautifully. Avoid anything neon, anything dirt cheap, and anything that tastes like apricot-flavored candy. The whole drink lives or dies on this bottle, so spend the extra few dollars.

Why Peychaud's and not Angostura?

Peychaud's is lighter, brighter, with that anise-and-cherry lift that plays against the apricot instead of muddying it. Angostura would drag the whole thing toward baking spice and weigh it down. The Peychaud's also gives the drink its rosy color, which matters when there's no garnish doing the visual work.

Is this just an apricot Aviation?

They're cousins, both gin sours dressed up by a fruit liqueur, but they drink differently. The Aviation leans floral and tart and a little austere thanks to maraschino and crème de violette. The Pendennis Club is rounder, warmer, more generous, with lime instead of lemon and that soft stone-fruit body. Same family tree, different temperament.

The Pendennis Club: Louisville's Forgotten Apricot Sour

Somewhere between the Aviation's icy floral restraint and the all-out fruit assault of a bad poolside drink lives the Pendennis Club. It is a gin sour wearing apricot like a good coat. Most people have never heard of it, which is a shame and also entirely on brand for a drink invented inside a private club that didn't much care whether you got in. Drink one and you understand why the bartenders who know it keep it close.

2 ozGin

1 ozApricot Brandy

0.75 ozLime Juice

2 dashesPeychaud's Bitters

Garnish: None

This is a shaken drink, and it has to be. You've got two ounces of gin, an ounce of apricot brandy, lime juice, and Peychaud's, and shaking is the only way to bind citrus and stone fruit and spirit into one cold, aerated thing. Hard shake, plenty of ice, ten seconds or so until the tin frosts and your knuckles complain. Double-strain into a chilled coupe so no shard of ice rides along to water down the back half. Use fresh lime, always, the bottled stuff tastes like a chemistry set. And mind your apricot brandy, because the category is a swamp. The cheap bottles are cloying syrup pretending to be liqueur. Find one that tastes like actual apricot, with a little bitter kick from the pit, and the whole drink snaps into focus. No garnish, which I respect. The Peychaud's gives it a rosy blush and an anise whisper that does more work than a wedge of fruit ever could.

This is a Sidecar at heart, even though there's not a drop of brandy or orange liqueur in it. The Sidecar family runs on a simple structural truth: take a complete sour, spirit plus citrus plus sweetener, and let a liqueur do the sweetening and the flavoring at the same time. When that liqueur is a fruit one and it leads with its fruit, the bartenders of a century ago called the result a daisy. The Pendennis Club is a textbook daisy. Apricot brandy is the structural liqueur here, poured at an ounce against two ounces of gin, sitting at or below the base spirit exactly as the family demands. It sweetens the lime, it perfumes the gin, it carries the drink's whole personality. That's the same job orange liqueur does in a Cadillac Margarita, that maraschino does in an Aviation, that crème de mûre does in a Bramble. Different fruit, same architecture. Once you see the bones, you see them everywhere.

The Pendennis Club was, and still is, a gentlemen's club in Louisville, Kentucky, founded in 1881. It is the kind of place that claims to have invented the Old Fashioned, a claim roughly nine other establishments also make, so take the institutional bragging with the usual grain of salt. What's less disputed is that this particular cocktail came out of that club sometime in the early twentieth century and rode the cocktail books of the era into modest immortality. It belongs to a whole lost genre of apricot drinks that the pre-Prohibition bar took for granted, the Blood and Sand and its cousins, back when apricot brandy was a respectable thing to keep on a back bar rather than a dusty curiosity. Then Prohibition gutted American drinking, the good apricot liqueurs vanished, the sweet imposters took over, and a drink like this got quietly shelved. That's the real tragedy here. The Pendennis Club isn't hard to make or hard to like. It got orphaned by history and bad product. The current generation of bartenders, the ones who actually read old books instead of inventing nine-ingredient nonsense with house-made foam, have dragged it back out, and good for them. It deserves a seat.

Open the Pendennis Club recipe card on Speed Pour

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FAQ

What apricot brandy should I actually buy?: Look for a bottle labeled apricot liqueur made from real fruit, ideally with some of that bitter almond note from the kernels. Rothman and Winter Orchard Apricot is the bartender default and it works beautifully. Avoid anything neon, anything dirt cheap, and anything that tastes like apricot-flavored candy. The whole drink lives or dies on this bottle, so spend the extra few dollars.
Why Peychaud's and not Angostura?: Peychaud's is lighter, brighter, with that anise-and-cherry lift that plays against the apricot instead of muddying it. Angostura would drag the whole thing toward baking spice and weigh it down. The Peychaud's also gives the drink its rosy color, which matters when there's no garnish doing the visual work.
Is this just an apricot Aviation?: They're cousins, both gin sours dressed up by a fruit liqueur, but they drink differently. The Aviation leans floral and tart and a little austere thanks to maraschino and crème de violette. The Pendennis Club is rounder, warmer, more generous, with lime instead of lemon and that soft stone-fruit body. Same family tree, different temperament.