Drink

Pousse Rapière

The Pousse Rapière cocktail is one of the planet’s most lethal concoctions. It looks like fizz, it is indescribably moreish, and you forget that it has a shot of liqueur in the bottom. All together, this means you can get properly smashed on this stuff before you know what you have done.

As a product of Gascony, Pousse Rapière liqueur is right up there with confit de canard. The liqueur takes its name from the sword used by the Gascons and made famous to all as the weapon of choice of Monsieur de Tréville’s cadre of musketeers in Alexander Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, which was set in Paris in 1625.

The drink is a little more recent, but has solid Gascon roots. Invented in 1960 by Réne Lassus of Château Monluc in Saint Puy in the Midi-Pyrénées near Toulouse, Pousse Rapière is made using white armagnac flavoured with orange. The same vineyard makes a sauvage-style sparking white, so it makes sense to mix the two, package them together and sell them as a cocktail kit. The Château even produces a flute glass with a picture of a rapier on the outside to guide the mixing process – one fill with Pousse Rapière to the tip of the sword, and then top to the tip of the handle with vin sauvage. An ice cube is dropped in, along with half a slice of orange.

A bottle of Pousse Rapière liqueur

Should you choose to try this cocktail, you ought to at least buy in the Monluc Pousse Rapière liqueur – there is no reasonable substitute. For the fizz, you can match style with a blanc de blancs.

Pousse Rapière

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By Château Monluc Serves: 1
Cooking Time: None

Ingredients

  • 1:6 ratio of Pousse Rapière and chilled Château de Monluc Vin Sauvage Brut (see notes).

Instructions

1

Put the liquid ingredients in a Champagne flute

2

Add an ice cube and half an orange slice.

Notes

Château de Monluc Vin Sauvage Brut can be substituted with a blanc de blancs, but this is not the place for Champagne, and definitely not prosecco.

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4 Comments

  • Reply
    Adam Bray
    13/11/2019 at 10:17 pm

    Hi folks,
    A 1:7 ratio is best. Make sure the Pousse Rapier and the bubbly (an acidic blanc de blanc, not a champagne) are both cold. NO ice…..why dilute the drink? We don’t do it at home, they don’t do it at Monluc.
    Enjoy. But like Irish coffee you only ever drink three. If you have four, you forget the first!!!
    Enjoy,
    Adam

    • Reply
      Nigel Eastmond
      14/11/2019 at 2:17 pm

      Hi Adam, that is so strange. We wrote the recipe directly from the Monluc web site. Your note made me go back and check. They have revamped the whole site and put in a 7:1 recipe with no ice!

  • Reply
    Eddie Sabol
    04/01/2021 at 8:46 pm

    If you cannot source the Pousse Rapier, a substitute is,
    1 – 375 ml bottle (about 300 grams) Mathilde XO Orange
    60 grams Cointreau
    12 grams sugar
    380 grams water

    When you can’t get what you want, but want what you cannot have…

    • Reply
      Nigel Eastmond
      09/01/2021 at 6:20 pm

      Good tip!

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