How to Make a Sidecar - part of the exotic cocktails video series by GeoBeats.

Hi I'm Scott Mayer. I'm the mixologist here at Miami's oldest bar in Cabaret, Tobacco Road.

Ok, so we're going to make a Sidecar. Its kind of a 'The mother of the Margarita'. Sidecar consists of fresh lemon juice, Cointreau, and Cognac, where a Margarita contains lime juice, Cointreau, and Tequila. Then the story is that the drink was developed in Mexico when a bartender ran out of the ingredients for a Sidecar. So what he decided to do was make a Sidecar with the ingredients he had available and of course being in Mexico he had fresh lime and Tequila. But we're going to do the classic way today, and that's put some fresh lemon juice, so we're going to use the juice of a whole lemon, some fresh Cointreau, as I was just pouring.

Now we're going to top this off with a nice healthy amount of Cognac. We'll go ahead and ice this cocktail down and give it a shake. A little note on shaking, rule of thumb is that if a cocktail has juice, you shake it. If its just liquor, you want to stir it. We're going to go ahead, give this a good shake. Go ahead and we'll take our martini glass, we'll give it about a half a rim of sugar, just plain white sugar. This way you get to taste it with and without the sugar. And we strain the cocktail into the martini glass. Proper garnish for this drink is a flamed lemon peel. I have a nice piece of lemon peel here, and we'll set the oils on fire above the drink. And there you have it, The Classic Sidecar.