I don’t remember the occasion, but a few weeks ago we picked up a bottle of Lillet Blanc. It’s one of my favorite summer drinks (Lillet + Orange + ice), but it’s been ages since we had any around. (I – ahem – have a bad habit of polishing it off… )

So knowing we were armed with Lillet, I asked Chris to make me a cocktail with it. Something sweet. The “French Connection” is what he made, following a recipe found on the web.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

The cocktail had all of the ingredients to make a fantastic drink: brandy, honey syrup, lillet… but despite following the recipe perfectly, it just fell a bit flat. Chris increased the syrup a bit and added more orange bitters and it helped a lot. The final cocktail was very reminiscent of a brandy old fashioned. Not bad!

While I appreciated Chris making the drink, I’ll admit it wasn’t a “top ten”. If anyone out there has an alternative recipe they like, I’d love to hear it! This one really feels like it has a lot of potential but we just didn’t hit the mark.