H.L. Mencken called the martini the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet, but I think the Sidecar goes one better: It’s as engrossing and enrapturing as the Great American novel.

Cue the Jay-Z soundtrack bandwagon sound effects Jazz Age music — it’s The Great Gatsby week at The Five O’Clock Cocktail Blog!

Honestly, few cocktails rival the singular, joyful, I’d-know-it-blindfolded taste of a Sidecar. It’s so much more than the sum of its triumvirate parts. How one drink with only three ingredients — cognac, triple sec, lemon juice — can prove so palate-memorable is beyond me and always has been. How that same drink has stood the test of time so well, having been invented in either Paris or London during WWI, only boggles the mind further. Most Sidecar tales note that the bar patron for whom the drink was made was an American officer stationed overseas during the war, so like the Martini, we Americans can at least claim some bit of its heritage. Also, kinda like Gatsby — erm, Fitzgerald, erm, Gatsby — with the pond-traipsing and the Paris in the roaring 20s and all that Jazz Age, right?

(By the way, I should mention that I’ve tagged all of the blog’s appropriately Gatsby-esque cocktails for easy perusing here. Bonne fete!)

Although it contains more than a splash of lemon juice, the Sidecar reminds me in flavor and look of A-list, all-time-classic cocktails that are liquor-only: the Manhattan, the Negroni and, mais oui, the Martini. Visually, it bears a beautiful translucency and a melon-gold-sunrise hue (as unique as its taste) that, I mean — the Sidecar is a one-glance, one-sip, complete endorphin rush, is what I’m trying to say.

One potential peccadillo I must own up to here. I prefer my Sidecars with a granulated sugar rim. That may sound sidecrass to some, but let me assure you that this cocktail’s overall flavor profile is only buoyed by the piquant, saccharine sting of some table sugar. (Yes, I even prefer it to my ballyhooed favey fave, the confectioner’s sugar rim.)

As you can see in the pic above, I got a little Art Deco-playful with my sugared rim for the sake of the Gats. Isn’t there a moment in one of the Great Gatsby trailers when Carey Mulligan’s pearls go flying? There we go; we’re sipping our Sidecars, we’re riding shotgun with one of the great American love storeis and like F. Scott, the pearls are tripping in the wind and we’re riding high on life.

The Sidecar

2 ounces Cognac Salignac

1/2 ounce triple sec

1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice (plus a little extra for stickying up the rim of your glass)

Granulated sugar, for the rim

First, prepare your glass: Dip the rim of a cocktail or martini glass into a shallow saucer of lemon juice. (Or, alternatively, run a cut lemon along the lip of the glass.) Then dip or roll your sticky’d-up rim in a second saucer of granulated sugar. Set glass aside. Combine three liquid ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into your glass.

Tasting Notes

The Sidecar is so foolproof, you can more than get away with no-name triple sec and whatever-name cognac, both of which I’ve used here.

To make the more dramatic sugared rim I mentioned and pic’d above, take a cut lemon half and use it to sort of draw a big, fat, diagonal stripe on a portion of your martini glass’ bowl. Then roll that portion of the bowl in a saucer of sugar.

Yes, I know a round-bowled cocktail couple would’ve been more Gastby-era apropos than a V-shaped martini glass. I like the V’s for doing sugared stuff.