![]() With a Rye Old-Fashioned, I'm enjoying Cocktail Punk's Saturnalia bitters (cranberry, toasted walnut, citrus) or Old Forester's Bohemian bitters (sour cherries, clove, smoked black pepper, cacao). I used to only take my Old-Fashioneds with bourbon, but lately I've been reaching for rye whiskey for the extra bite - Peerless Rye, Willett Rye 4-year, or Russell's Reserve Single Barrel Rye are some of my go-to bottles - to build the drink around. If you're just starting to build your Old-Fashioned preferences, your favorite whiskey is a good place to start.Įvery home bar should have a bottle of Angostura, but I also like playing around with my bitters to add slightly different dimensions to the Old-Fashioned flavor. The result is a soft and sublime transformation of a good whiskey, while still allowing it to hold center stage. Muddle a sugar cube with a few dashes of bitters (and a splash of water, if you need it, but "water" in the Old-Fashioned can just be the ice), stir in whiskey, serve over a big ice cube with a lemon or orange peel. Originally, an Old-Fashioned could be made with whiskey, brandy, or Holland or Old Tom gins. These days a standard base is bourbon or rye. At home, though, the Old-Fashioned helps me practice the saner, quieter, slower life I crave. When I visit a good bar, of course, I want a professional creator like Jared or those Gilded Age inventors to surprise me. And what's more, I could refer back to those four elements to mix up any number of drinks on a whim, based on what I have on hand, without needing to run to the store. ![]() But after that event, I realized that even I - a person too messy to take on more than a neat pour - could mix a beautiful Old-Fashioned. Neither trained in the mixing arts nor a mad genius behind the bar. Whether you need dozens of different bespoke cocktails created for an afternoon tasting event or one day-long in-depth clinic on a single bourbon, he should be your first call. Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter. That's where he blew my mind with the basic elements and showed me a pathway to their wild possibilities and elegant limits. Anything categorized as "old fashioned" was sure to be fussy and complicated with a steep learning curve like sewing my own clothes. Then my friend and cocktail expert Jared Schubert called me one summer day to assist him like a vagabond Vanna while he gave a talk and demonstration on the Old-Fashioned at a music festival's bourbon tent. Once upon a time, I thought mixing cocktails - anything more complicated than liquor + mixer, really - was an activity best left to the professionals. If we can do that with a cocktail, is there another part of life to which we could apply the same simplified rigor? But there is something to be said for the practice of stripping all the complicated extras and conveniences we pile onto our lives down to reveal the basic elements we need to thrive: Spirits. Maybe a "saner, quieter, slower life" in practice sounds appealing but out of reach. Life is hard ordering an Old-Fashioned is easy. (History just repeats itself, doesn't it?) "The Old-Fashioned," Wondrich writes, "was a drinker's plea for a saner, quieter, slower life." According to David Wondrich's history "Imbibe!," the Old-Fashioned came about as a reaction to the increasingly complex modern mixology inventions of Gilded Age bartenders: Don't make me a whiskey cocktail - with god knows what flourishes and fancies - I'll take an old-fashioned cocktail, please. And while it's easy to believe otherwise, given the dazzling heights to which contemporary bar menus aspire, those four building blocks are all a cocktail requires. What you do with them, though - that's where inspiration, regional tastes and ingenuity come in.įor my money, the Old-Fashioned is the elegant apex of these four elements' harmonious combination. Since the early 1800s, those are the four elements that have defined the cocktail. " The Oracle Pour" is Salon Food's spirits column that helps you decide what to drink tonight.
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