Grand Marnier vs Cointreau: The Primary Variations

Whether or not or not or not you’re new to citrus liqueurs or have a gaggle of dusty half-bottles in your personal house bar, it’s straightforward to confuse Grand Marnier and Cointreau. Each have French names and extended pedigrees. They seem in most of the associated cocktail recipes, and a few folks use their model names interchangeably as a shorthand for all orange liqueur—like calling each facial tissue a Kleenex.

Nonetheless inside these two considerably comparable liqueurs, nuances abound. Variations between Grand Marnier and Cointreau embody substances, manufacturing, model, and one of the simplest ways they’ll most fascinating be utilized in your glass or shaker. Correct proper right here’s every little issue you might want to seek out out about Grand Marnier vs. Cointreau.

What Is Cointreau?

Cointreau is an unaged triple sec, or orange liqueur, made out of Spanish and Caribbean orange peels, impartial alcohol, sugar, and water.

The corporate dates to 1885, when brothers Adolphe and Edouard-Jean Cointreau expanded their confectionery enterprise in Angers, France to incorporate liqueurs. Edouard-Jean’s son, Edouard, is credited with creating the orange liqueur now usually known as Cointreau circa 1871. On the flip of the century, an English importer, George Glendenning, launched Cointreau overseas and reportedly impressed distillers to make it quite a bit a lot much less candy to attraction to additional audiences in 1923.

Cointreau is a triple sec, a class of liqueurs that’s confusingly furthermore a model title. Throughout the event you see these two phrases capitalized as Triple Sec, notion it’s the latter. All triple secs are orange-flavored and most fall between 20–40% alcohol by quantity. Relying on which nook of the net you consider, some declare that Cointreau invented the class, and that the title describes the three sorts of orange peels and relatively decrease sugar content material materials supplies of its product (sec means dry in French). Nonetheless, one completely different French model, Combier, says that its distiller made the “world’s first triple sec” in Saumur, France in 1834, quite a lot of a really very long time earlier than Edouard Cointreau joined the household enterprise. Cointreau may need merely been the primary to register the time interval in its model title in 1885.

Cointreau was marketed as Cointreau Triple Sec till the a really very long time between World Wars I and II. All via that point, Cointreau dropped the phrase to distinguish itself from fully completely different triple secs transferring into the market. In 1990, Cointreau merged with one completely different French liquor company, Rémy Martin, to type Rémy Cointreau, a Paris-based drinks conglomerate.

Distilled in copper column stills, Cointreau pours clear contained in the glass. It has good, zippy orange flavors and a dry end that some bartenders credit score rating ranking to the comparatively small quantity of beet sugar in its recipe. When you may sip it straight or on the rocks, it’s additional often utilized in cocktails as a modifier. We advise it in Sidecars, Cosmopolitans, and any drink that advantages from measured sweetness, orange model, and a crisp end.

What Is Grand Marnier?

Grand Marnier is a cognac-based orange liqueur that accommodates each triple sec and oak-aged cognac. It accommodates 49% clear triple sec plus 51% cognac that’s been aged in oak barrels.

Love, marriage, and savvy selling and promoting underscore Grand Marnier’s backstory. In 1876, Julia Lapostolle, the granddaughter of a fruit liqueur distiller, married Louis-Alexandre Marnier, the son of outlets. They shaped a company usually known as La Maison Marnier Lapostolle and commenced to distribute the Lapostolle household’s wares. In 1880, Louis-Alexandre blended a liqueur made out of Caribbean oranges with cognac correct proper right into a spirit he usually known as Curaçao Marnier. An incredible pal, the famed Swiss hotelier César Ritz, steered renaming it Grand Marnier. In 1892, Louis-Alexandre tweaked packaging, promoting Grand Mariner in a trademarked, copper-still-shaped bottle designed by Baccarat and nonetheless used immediately.

In 2016, Gruppo Campari, the Italian beverage company that furthermore owns Campari, Aperol, and Espolòn tequila, turned a controlling shareholder contained in the company that owns Grand Marnier, Société des Produits Marnier Lapostolle.

Grand Marnier is 51% cognac. Constituted of ugni blanc grapes from the Cognac area of France, the cognac is double-distilled in a copper nonetheless, aged in Tronçais and Limousin oak barrels, and blended with fully completely different crus and eaux-de-vie. The remaining 49% of Grand Marnier consists of column-distilled triple sec made with bitter Caribbean oranges to create an amber-hued liqueur with candied orange and nutty aromas and flavors.

All of those picks give Grand Marnier a darker amber colour than fully completely different triple secs, plus a fuller physique and nutty flavors and aromas with caramelized orange notes. It is likely to be sipped neat as an after-dinner drink, and, notably, is a key half contained in the sauce for crêpes suzette, a major French dish. It’s furthermore an exquisite cocktail modifier, although it’s fuller and richer than fully completely different triple secs. As such, may ought to tweak recipe specs to sort, fairly than instantly substituting it fairly than generic triple sec. It really works significantly efficiently contained in the Singapore Sling, the place the liqueur gives improvement alongside the heady mixture of gin and Cherry Heering liqueur.

Grand Marnier vs Cointreau: What’s the Distinction?

The principle distinction between Grand Marnier and Cointreau is that solely Grand Marnier consists of cognac. Resulting from this, their base gives, manufacturing strategies, and flavors aren’t an equal.

Substances for Cointreau are orange peels, sugar, water, and a impartial base spirit. Grand Marnier makes use of these together with alcohol distilled from grapes grown contained in the Cognac area of France.

Cointreau is distilled utilizing copper column stills, whereas Grand Marnier manufacturing entails column stills for the orange liqueur and copper pot stills for the cognac. Cointreau is obvious and unaged, nonetheless the cognac in Grand Marnier is aged French oak. Due to 51% of its liquid spends time in barrels, Grand Marnier has a darker colour, fuller physique, and toastier notes than Cointreau, which seems and tastes lighter and brighter.