Cointreau Review And Tasting Notes
Cointreau is the most famous French triple sec in the world, a classic liqueur produced through the maceration of bitter oranges in alcohol, which, in a second step, is distilled to find finesse and enhance the aromatic flavor of oranges.
But what exactly is Cointreau liqueur good for, besides making memorable cocktails like Margarita, Cosmopolitan, and White Lady? In theory, you can serve Cointreau at 12 degrees as a digestive or even as an aperitif by adding soda and juice of lime, lemon, bergamot, mandarin, or orange. There are a thousand ways to drink it, but its complex (but not very nuanced) taste lends itself to mixing excellently.
IT is certainly not a tremendous solo liqueur, but, like all triple secs, it is a generous wingman who knows how to make other ingredients more expressive. It is a magnificence enhancer, a splendid binder for breath and aromatic volume, but it is a bit monolithic drunk neat.
The bouquet
The aromas are intense, pungent, and interwoven in an aromatic framework dominated by all the possible citrus fruits on Earth. You will feel these citrus fruits declined in a thousand forms: peel, juice, essential oils, jam, burnt peel, orange blossom, drowned in orange blossom honey. To close, slight floral scents, a few spices, vanilla, nutmeg, and a very ethereal pungent note. Overall it is broad and sumptuous, but variety is not its forte, but by choice. He goes straight on his way and certainly doesn’t want to be a pimp.
The flavor
On the palate, it goes much better. It dares. It is sharp, driven by an exhilarating fresh vein that hops between infinite citrus flavors, interspersed with pepper, mace, and more mature echoes with jam and mint. The structure is solid; the heat is conveyed by the acidity of the sip and is never redundant.
Cointreau is a triple sec with few rivals in the 14-16 euro range if you consider the very affordable price. Despite being an industrial product produced in tens of millions of bottles, it is never banal.
What are the cocktails to do with Cointreau?
This liqueur is present in some essential cocktail recipes that every bartender should know perfectly. Here are the main ones: Margarita, Kamikaze, Angelo Azzurro, Lemon Drop Martini, Between the sheets, Sidecar, Cosmopolitan, and the White Lady.
The history of Cointreau
As you well know, all triple secs derive from curacao, the first liqueur flavored with Laraha oranges produced by the Dutch on the island of Curacao, where the Spaniards brought this type of bitter oranges from Valencia.
So let’s clarify a concept: the Cointreau family has not invented anything: they have only refined the production process of Curacao. They have eliminated the cumin and produced more “bitter,” and defined liqueurs.
It is undoubtedly true that the Cointreau liqueur was the second triple sec ever produced.
Combier and Cointreau were pioneers, and thanks to the extraordinary knowledge in the distillation field of French, they revolutionized the world of spirits by creating the first “French fashion curacao,” which in some cases is produced with maceration of orange peels in Cognac.
Yes, precisely as in the case of the Grand Marnier, the great rival of Cointreau.
Back to the history of our liqueur, legend has it that in 1875 Edouard Cointreau, as soon as he entered the family distillery, decided to produce a liqueur flavored with orange peel. At that time, fruits were still considered exotic and rare.
The first bottles of Cointreau had the inscription Curacao triple sec Cointreau on the label. They had not yet disconnected the umbilical cord from the island of Curacao, although Cointreau has always been produced in France.
Within a few years, the liqueur had worldwide success, and thus a real empire was born, so much so that today there are more than 12 million bottles of Cointreau produced and exported worldwide.
It should be noted that Edouard Cointreau’s father and uncle were pastry chefs and began to produce liqueurs for the production of desserts because they considered the liqueurs they had available at the time inadequate.
How to use it?
On a practical level, if you have to make cocktails, using Cointreau, triple sec, or curacao is the same. There are no abysmal differences. Usually, triple sec is of higher quality, has less sugar, and has a sharper taste.
How is Cointreau liqueur made?
The process to be described is straightforward. The practical realization is a distillation art. You take alcohol at 96, like the one you use to make homemade liqueurs, then put the oranges in infusion for 24 hours. The alcohol in which the oranges have released their essential oils is distilled with the classic charentais still, the one used for Cognac.
Remember that we are always in France, the undisputed homeland of spirits.
The process is always the same: the alcohol evaporates at 75 degrees, the water at 100.
So it is boiled to separate the two elements.
The alcohol is heated in a water bath to evaporate the alcohol. You collect the fumes that rise in a cooling coil, and thus the vapors return to the liquid state.
The result is concentrated both at an aromatic and alcoholic level. From a toxic gradation of 80 and passing degrees, the liquid is brought to the canonical 40 degrees, adding water and sugar to sweeten. Only at this point does it become a real liqueur and is bottled.
Gradation
40 degrees.
Price
Fifteen euros is an acceptable price.