Ingredients

orange brandy

Also known as “orange-flavored liqueur with an aged brandy base”. Orange brandy is a generic category for orange liqueurs that prominently feature flavorful aged grape brandy as a base, as exemplified by Grand Marnier. This category emerged in the 1890s when the Café Royal in London commissioned a deluxe curaçao from Marnier-Lapostolle that used their cognac as the base, rather than a neutral spirit. Imitators followed as the concept is a natural product extension for grape brandy producers, with good examples produced with great care in alembic stills alongside their brandy components. These products are an up-market evolution of curaçao wherein the flavor from refined aged brandy plays an equal role with orange in the liqueur. As such, these products may be divergent enough from simpler curaçao liqueurs to be a poor substitute in some situations; the essential distinction is how the brandy flavor will play. By contrast, these ingredients generally stand well on their own as a cordial.