Apricot Brandy — tasting notes & food pairings

Apricot Brandy

Apricot brandy is, despite its name, usually not a true distilled brandy at all but a sweet apricot liqueur — a brandy or neutral spirit sweetened and steeped with apricots (and often their kernels) to about twenty-four to thirty percent alcohol by volume, prized as a fruit-forward modifier in classic cocktails such as the Paradise, the Apricot Sour and the Charlie Chaplin.

Sweet27% ABV

Intensely sweet and syrupy, apricot brandy leads with ripe, jammy apricot flesh and dried stone fruit, backed by caramel, honey and a touch of orchard-blossom floral lift. Kernel-forward bottlings carry a distinct bitter-almond note — the benzaldehyde shared with amaretto and cherry — that adds depth and a faint marzipan edge on the finish. The texture is viscous and rounded, the alcohol gentle for a liqueur at roughly a quarter to a third ABV, and the aftertaste lingers sweet and fruity with a whisper of kernel bitterness.