Cointreau Liqueur

Ready to meet the strength of the crystal clear spirit, are baskets laden with sun-dried orange peels, their intricate colours defining different orange flavours; greenish-bronze for bitter, orangey-red for sweet, which yield a greater fruit intensity. Their heady fragrance will soon be revealed by the following steps. The peels are fully dried, macerated and finally distilled in gloriously burnished red copper stills to extract every drop of the precious essential oils. The other ingredients (alcohol, sugar and water) – which are also completely natural – give the liqueur its creamy roundness and aromatic vigour that inspires the mouth. Like an intimate secret, the recipe itself is faithfully guarded.

A mix of tradition and modernity. Four generations of the Cointreau family have led Cointreau, since the brand was founded, 150 years ago. Adolphe and Edouard-Jean Cointreau, famous master confectioners, establish a distillery in Angers to create spirits using local fruits. Edouard Cointreau, son of Edouard-Jean, distils a spirit from sweet and bitter orange peel, with a highly crystalline robe, which is a major novelty at the time. He also invents the square-sided amber-coloured container, the modern version of which still remains the signature of Cointreau liqueur to this day.