Sherry Cobbler
Sherry, sugar and orange built over crushed ice, drunk through a straw rather than sipped from the rim.
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A Sherry Cobbler in a tall glass packed with crushed ice, garnished with a long curl of orange peel
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Sherry is routinely fined with isinglass or gelatine, and a producer rarely states whether a given bottle was.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
½ orange (70 g)
15 ml simple syrup
120 ml fino sherry
40 g fresh strawberries
- ½ orange (70 g)
- 15 ml simple syrup
- 120 ml fino sherry
- 40 g fresh strawberries
Glass
Vessel
135 ml of liquid plus 289 ml of crushed ice occupies about 424 ml, inside the 470 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 1m 30sLightly muddle two or three slices of the ½ orange (70 g) with the 15 ml simple syrup in the base of the glass.
Add the 120 ml fino sherry and fill the glass with crushed ice.
Churn with a bar spoon for 20s to bring the sherry up through the ice.
The drink is churned rather than stirred: a spoon or swizzle is worked up and down through the crushed ice so it packs into the glass and melts faster than cubed ice would, which is what a Cobbler's short drinking time depends on.
Top with more crushed ice and spear the 40 g fresh strawberries on a pick across the rim, with a straw.
Common pitfallA straw is not a period detail to skip: crushed ice against bare lips is the reason the Cobbler is credited with popularising the straw in America in the first place, and drinking it without one is uncomfortable rather than merely old-fashioned.
Keeping and make-ahead
The crushed ice is churned into the drink at the glass; there is nothing here that benefits from being pre-mixed.
About
Sherry, sugar and orange packed over crushed ice, the drink credited with popularising the drinking straw in America and, by the 1880s, the country's most ordered mixed drink.
The earliest documented reference to a Cobbler is an 1838 diary entry by Katherine Jane Ellice, a Canadian traveller in the United States, identified by drinks historian David Wondrich as the drink's first known written mention 1. The style was already common in American taverns by the end of that decade 2, and it reached formal print in Jerry Thomas's 1862 The Bar-Tender's Guide, the first book written specifically for bartenders, in a three-ingredient form of sherry, sugar and orange 2.
The Cobbler's rise is tied directly to the drinking straw's own history. Wondrich describes it as the straw's "killer app": crushed ice packed against bare lips is uncomfortable to drink through, and the Cobbler is credited with bringing the straw into common American use before paper straws were even patented, when rye straw and hollow pasta served the same purpose 1. Charles Dickens gave the drink wider notice by featuring it in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit 2, and bartender Harry Johnson called it, in his 1888 manual, the most popular beverage in the country with ladies and gentlemen alike 2.
The Cobbler's popularity did not survive Prohibition. Cocktail authority David Embury, writing in 1949, noted that Cobblers as a category never really re-emerged once legal bars reopened 1, and the style has since been a period revival rather than a drink that stayed in continuous circulation.
- 1Cobblers Cocktails — Straw, Crushed Ice, Fruitdiffordsguide.com
- 2Sherry cobbleren.wikipedia.org