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Appreciate all the history you publish on your site. I was wondering why my recipe didn't include raspberry syrup, and I realized I had referenced Harry Johnson's 1888 edition of The New & Improved Illustrated Bartender's Manual, in which he replaced the raspberry syrup with pineapple and changed the aromatic bitters from Angostura to Boker's. It sounds better with the raspberry syrup.

So red curaçao is not simply red-dyed triple sec, analogous to its blue cousin? What does it actually taste like? I made the drink using Pierre Ferrand orange curaçao, and I added a drop of red food coloring to achieve the correct color. It doesn’t make for a bad drink, but the balance does seem a bit off. I will refrain from rating since I didn’t have red curaçao.

It took me a while to track down a supplier of Red Curaçao - not easy, even here in the Netherlands - but I'm glad to have made the effort. A very smooth drink, the scant additions really take the edge off the brandy and make it greater than the sum of all its parts. A definite favourite - and guess what, I have an almost full bottle of red curaçao to keep me going, now :-)