The Alexander Cocktail: A Chocolate-Lover's Dream

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As we approach Valentine’s Day, there’s one food and flavor on everyone’s mind - chocolate. Ideas of chocolate cocktails evoke decadent, dessert mixes like the Chocolate Martinis. The beauty of the category is that it is populated by drinks like this, but also many more. Chocolate and liquor work in harmony to present everything from the stirred and spirit forward, the decadent and rich, and the unexpected and multi-faceted. This week, we’ll turn to one of the most classic among these chocolate cocktails, a drink largely responsible for the prevalence of creme de cacao: the Alexander.

The Alexander Cocktail is best known through what is actually a riff on the original, the Brandy Alexander. A simple combination of brandy, creme de cacao, and cream, this is a quintessential tripod build wherein each ingredient relies on the other two to achieve a delicious harmony. Furthermore, the simplicity allows for significant creative license in tailoring to taste. Dark creme de cacao is the most common call, but no reason why one couldn’t use a white creme de cacao. Interestingly, though the difference between the two is largely aesthetic, white creme de cacao is actually based on the distillation of cacao beans whereas dark crème de cacao is flavored with cacao extract. Accordingly, it does offer a slightly lighter, more vanilla forward expression of chocolate. The cream is also subject to personalization, as one can opt towards the more decadent with heavy cream or dial the richness back with half and half. The brandy itself is obviously widely variable as well, and though the complexities of a long aged Cognac may be lost in the blend of chocolate and cream, each different brandy will contribute uniquely to the sum. With that point, we return to a central consideration of the Brandy Alexander - it is not the original drink. The original Alexander was made with gin.

The gin-based Alexander was likely developed around the turn of the century by Hotel Rector bartender Troy Alexander. In his pursuit of crafting a snow-white drink for a particular ad campaign, Alexander made a very enjoyable mix. But gin in a dessert drink can sound like a tough sell. The full, rounded, sweeter tones of a nicely mellowed brandy simply sound more appealing in collaboration with chocolate and cream. Gin in a creamy drink sounds like inviting astringent austerity to your dessert, veering into a combination that sounds more like some Orwellian perversion. Gin and milk recalls the Dirty Pretty Things song of societal dissociation or something out of A Clockwork Orange; something about it sounds positively dystopian. However! In actuality, the citrus notes of the right gin pair deliciously with the cream and chocolate to remind the drinker of a Creamsicle, accented by a balancing undertone of chocolate.

So this Valentine’s Day, I would recommend embracing the chocolatey versatility of the Alexander cocktail. Remember that, as with any good drink, you’re balancing flavors and having them work in harmony. Though adding gin to cream might sound like the work of Winston Smith with a bottle of Victory Gin outside the view of Big Brother, building an Alexander cocktail allows the citrus, floral, and other notes of your choice gin to balance with the dessert tones of the chocolate and cream. It’s worth noting that it wasn’t long after that Troy Alexander’s inception of the drink that Brandy usurped the gin and became the direct association. So don’t hesitate, experiment! If you have a spirit that you think could bear its notes in tasty combination with those of chocolate and cream, give it a try! I may try an agave spirit myself. We have a mezcal and chocolate tasting coming up next week with Laughing Gull chocolates, so I know for sure that chocolate and mezcal can pair wonderfully. That’s some of the greatest joy of cocktails, the celebration of how delicious ingredients can come together to form an original and fulfilling whole. And what’s more thematic for Valentine’s Day than that? That and chocolate.

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