The Old Fashioned, simply put, is a cocktail made by muddling sugar with bitters and water, adding a little more than a slug of whiskey (typically rye or bourbon), and garnishing with orange twist or zest and a cocktail cherry. It is traditionally served in an
old fashioned glass (also known as rocks glass), which predated the cocktail. Yet for all of its suave simplicity, the drink remains as relevant today as it was when it first captured drinker’s hearts and taste buds 200 years ago.
If you’re a history buff, you could draw a straight line connecting this drink to the first recorded definition of the cocktail category in general (circa 1806), which called for spirits, sugar, water and bitters. The Old Fashioned hits all those marks. Developed during the 19th century and given its name in the 1880’s, it is also one of six basic drinks in David A. Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks *1948.
2 main category types: aromatic and sour
Ingredients into 3 categories: the base, modifying agents, and special flavorings and coloring agents
Ratio 1:2:8 (1 sweet, 2 sour, 8 base) for sour cocktails
6 basic drinks: the Daiquiri, the Jack Rose, the Manhattan, the Old Fashioned, and the Sidecar.
An Old Fashioned was one of the simpler and earlier versions of cocktails, before the development of advanced bartending techniques and recipes in the later part of the 19th century. The first documented definition of the word “cocktail” was in response to a reader’s letter asking to define the word in the May 6th 1806 issue of The Balance and Columbian Repository in Hudson, New York. In the May 13th 1806 issue, the paper’s editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar; it was also referred to at the time as a Bittered Sling and is essentially the recipe for an old fashioned. J.E. Alexander describes the cocktail similarly in 1833, as he encountered it in New York City, as being rum, gin, or brandy, significant water, bitters, and sugar, though he includes a nutmeg garnish as well.
By the 1860s, it was common for orange curacao, absinthe, and other liqueurs to be added to the cocktail. As cocktails became more complex, drinkers accustomed to simpler cocktails began to ask bartenders for something akin to the pre-1850s drinks.
The original concoction, albeit in different proportions, came back into vogue, and was referred to as “old-fashioned”. The most popular of the in-vogue “old-fashioned” cocktails were made with whiskey, according to a Chicago barman, quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1882, with rye being more popular than bourbon. The recipe he describes is a similar combination of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar of seventy-six years earlier.
The Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s club founded in 1881 in Louisville, Kentucky, claims the old-fashioned cocktail was invented there. The recipe was said to have been invented by a bartender at that club in honor of Colonel James E. Pepper, a prominent bourbon distiller, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City. Cocktail critic David Wonderich finds this origin story unlikely, however, as the first mention in print of “old fashioned cocktails” was in the Chicago Daily Tribune in February 1880, before the Pendennis Club was opened; this in addition to the fact that the old fashioned was simply a re-packaging of a drink that had long existed.
With its conception rooted in the city’s history, in 2015 the city of Louisville named the old fashioned as its official cocktail. Each year, during the first two weeks of June, Louisville celebrates “Old Fashioned Fortnight” which encompasses bourbon events, cocktail specials, and National Bourbon Day which is always celebrated on June 14th.
The original Old Fashioned recipe would have showcased the whiskey available in America in the 19th century: Irish, Bourbon or rye whiskey. But in some regions, especially Wisconsin, brandy is substituted for whiskey (sometimes called a brandy old fashioned). Eventually the use of other spirits became common, such as a gin recipe becoming popularized in the late 1940’s.
Common garnishes for an old fashioned include an orange twist or a maraschino cherry or both, although these modifications came around 1930, some time after the original recipe was invented. While some recipes began making sparse use of the orange zest for flavor, the practice of muddling orange and other fruit gained prevalence as late as the 1990s.
Some modern variants have greatly sweetened the old fashioned, by adding blood orange soda to make a fizzy old fashioned, or muddled strawberries to make a strawberry old fashioned.
Modern versions may also include elaborately carved ice; though cocktail critic David Wonderich notes that this, along with essentially all other adornments or additions, goes against the simple spirit of the old fashioned.
Top 5 Old Fashioned in Nashville
Comments