To say cocktail culture in the Americas was shaped by prohibition would be as vast an understatement as it is cliche by this point.
But, let’s imagine it’s the year of our Lord 1920. You just returned home from a foriegn place where people spoke in funny accents and other worldy dialects. There were strange teas and foods you’ve never tasted, and something else. A sound you’ve never heard. A horrible guttural bombinating mechanical roar. Then the screams. Your feet were soaked through and mud covered your face and blood - blood on your hands - blood-scream-what language is that-the stench-more blood - and you don’t know which one of your comrades now lying lifeless in the muddy trench beside you it belongs to. You hear the order given in French, look to your commanding officer who affirms, and charge en masse through a deluge of gunfire. How can they be shooting so fast? These guns, these guns are like ... machines.
You’re snapped back into lucidity by a morose man pulling a cart of brewing tools down the street, “Hey! Watch it, kid.” “Su-sorry, sir.” You’re back in your native land, you made it out the other side of the atrocities, you’re safe. But, sometimes the pounding heart and shaky hand need to be quelled. Other people don’t understand, they try, but they weren’t there. They didn’t see-smell-taste the blood.
You finally arrive at what you think is the place. Those teetotaling bastards, you did what you did with your head held high for them and this is what they resort you to. A man can fight, kill even for your country, but can’t have a drink. But, how bad could it be? After all, you heard Hemingway and Fitzgerald fancy this establishment, if you can call it that. “Well, here it is.” The back alley door off Bedford St. You kock and the door cracks. “Um, is this Chumley’s?” “Hey, buddy. Speak easy around here, capeesh?”
The small room is a vibrant juxtaposition to the drab despondency outside. There’s a phonograph playing low in the corner and lights so dim you can barely discern glowing faces as you make your way towards a tall oak bar. One man wearing an austere countenance flicks his head upwards at you as to say without words, “what’ll it be?” There’s no menu, no labels on the bottles, but you know instinctively what to ask for. You say, “Give me one of those old fashioneds.”
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As leaves fall alongside the temperatures here in Nashville and the patio tiki bars close up for winter the various remnants of a retro speakeasy movement begin to fill with intemperate dionysians seeking refuge from the inclemency. Most of the allure of the speakeasy revival has reduced to an eye-rolling “secret door” wherein the anachronistic esoteric Victorian craft furniture has been worn, torn, and adorned by unforgiving flocks of peacoat laden party-goers. But the tradition of fine craft cocktails in these our modern times is alive and well. Still, of all the cocktails to fall victim to the 18th amendment why is it the Old Fashioned that seems to have ambled out the rubble like a soldier crawling from the shell of blissful youth?
I contend simplicity is key. The beginning of a craft movement has to begin with a return to classics, and in a post Stranger Things world hell-bent and hard-up for nostalgia what better than a throwback to the bygone days of our forebears? I mean, it’s literally in the name. Beyond all that I believe this cocktail leads the charge in this modern movement because when done correctly, it actually tastes good!
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of bar menus out there replete with libations featuring ingredients that remind us why they fell out of fashion. Little bottles of tonics, tall bottles of french aperitifs, anise and Fernet and Pernod and eye of newt and bitters infused wizard testes. You can keep all of that, I'm looking for something a bit more … old fashioned? To make a traditional delicious Old Fashioned cocktail you don’t need anything that comes in a dropper or tastes like potpourri. And great news, you don’t need to be wearing a tiny vest!
Refreshingly unlike the divisive Beachcomber/Trader Vic feud the enmity towards fruit-crushed-infused-syrupy-over iced abominations of the Old Fashioned seem to be congruent. There are definitely some variations of prep but before we get into that let’s see what’s so old about the Old Fashioned.
“Cocktail”, as defined by The Balance and Colombian Repository of Hudson, NY in 1806 reads as follows: “a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar.” It’s analogous to the sour, sweet, strong, weak mantra serving as the basis of most tiki drinks. In the before time these “bitter slings” as they were also called, could be served with any of your garden variety whiskey, rums, and gins as well as some of the at the time more exotic tequila or mezcals. (The Mezcal Old Fashioned is well deserving of its own article.)
Bourbon seems to have entered the picture around 1800 when the recipe of splashing bitters atop a sugar cube, adding a few small pieces of ice, and finishing with a generous pour of American Whiskey was known as the Whiskey Cocktail. This was the basis from which all early Ameri-cocktails would blossom, and therefore eventually became known as, that “old fashioned” cocktail. It took all the way till 1895 for a recipe we may recognize to be published.
Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey glass
Add 2 dashes Angostura bitters
Add 1 small piece of ice
Add 1 piece lemon peel
Add 1 jigger of whiskey
It would appear that swapping the lemon for orange peel is pretty agreed upon and a lot of reputable tippling spots will add a bordeaux cherry. The co-mingling of bright orange zest with thick rich cherry syrup really adds a level to even the grumpiest old whiskey.
The Old Fashioned was featured heavily as the favorite cocktail of Jon Hamm’s character in the immensely popular AMC television program Madmen. Can we blame that show for the speakeasy boom of the mid 2010’s? Or perhaps the revival of pre-prohibition cocktails was simply the next step in cultural cocktalia evolution, an answer to the sugary neon Red Bull poisoned nectar of the douche we all tried to pass off as cocktails in the 90’s and early 2000s. Thank heaven for hipsters reaching into the flavored Smirnoff abyss and pulling us out of darkness. On that note, let’s make a drink!
It should go without saying by now if you’ve read or listened to any other episodes of Pod Tiki that no recipe is ever completely agreed upon, but I’ve distilled the Old Fashioned down to two widely popular variants: mixing in a glass or in a beaker.
Let’s start with beaker, as it’s probably what you’ve seen in your local watering hole. The standard docket is to put a scoop of ice into a beaker, add 2 drops of Angostura bitters, ¼ oz of simple syrup, and 2 oz of your favorite whiskey. Stir with a bar spoon rapidly till the beaker frosts over then strain into a rocks glass. Peel off a piece of orange zest, twist it over the glass to release the essential oils, rub it around the rim of the glass and drop it in. Add 2-3 pieces of ice. Spoon out one Bordeaux cherry and plop that sucker in there too. It’s ok to get a little of the red syrup from the cherry jar in there, but not too much. And that’s that.
The second method is more traditional. In your rocks glass place one cube of sugar. Soak that thing with 2-3 dashes of Angostura bitters and muddle that into a paste. Add your orange peel and give that a few pushes with the muddler to release those sweet sweet essential oil flavors and get it to play real nice with that sugar/bitters paste. Add your 2-3 ice cubes and pour whiskey over top. Stir in the glass till sugar is dissolved. We’re only trying to dissolve the sugar not melt the ice. The Old Fashioned is designed to mellow out throughout the course of the drink. We want it to start out full flavored and become more nuanced as the ice melts naturally. Add your Bordeaux cherry and serve.
I’ve seen some bartenders use orange bitters in the paste and even add a bar spoon of soda water to help dissolve the cube into a paste. Some folks leave the cherry out, some muddle the orange and some just twist it over the glass. Honestly, both methods of prep I’ve found to yield similar results. But, despite how fun it is using a bar spoon in a beaker my penchant towards tradition makes in-the-glass mixing my prefered method. Of course, these are all trifling bickers compared to the real star of this cocktail: Whiskey.
Keeping in mind that rum is my forte I do reside in Nashville, therefore dwelling among the pervasive ardour of unapologetic over-whiskification. Tennessee and Kentucky are total homers for the boozy grain. I’ll go over what I’ve found in my, ahem… research. Recipes will hold varying nomenclature regarding whiskey, and rye. It’s an all bourbon and shine is whiskey but not all whiskey is bourbon or shine scenario. Unlike the rums we’ve discussed which have virtually nil in regards to regulation whiskey in the Americas is highly governed. The blanket statement of whiskey being any spirit distilled from corn, barley, wheat, or rye is where defuse definitions stop abruptly as the whiskey industry is rife with high passionatos.
The whiskey we know and love for the Old Fashioned would be your garden variety Tennessee Mash, Bourbon, and Rye, respectively. We begin with a bubbling bog-like vat of grain, water, and yeast called mash. This is where those sweet sweet little organisms eat grain and poop out boozy goodness, more or less. In the Sour Mash style of distilling each new batch begins with a “starter” sample from the previous batch. Think Jack Daniels or Dickel. There is a distinct sweetness that finishes on the back roof of the mouth. Rye, being the most intuitively named of all, utilizes a mash made of at least 51% rye. This tends to have a spicy bite. Most popular whiskey brands will have a rye variant. And finally Bourbon, the most finicky, must be distilled with at least 51% corn, be aged at least 2 years in new oak barrels, and most importantly must be made in the good ol’ U.S. of A. No word on why 51% is the paradigmatic number, but one does not simply argue with a Kentuckian, I do declare!
I generally go for the good old Tennessee sour mash whiskey. Gentlemen Jack form Jack Daniels is my favorite. It’s a good all around house whiskey that rounds off the edges of the Jack Daniels bite. But, in a cocktail things are different. Plain whiskey is almost too smooth for an Old Fashioned. The sweet and bitters tend to over power the spirit. I find cutting back on sugar helps here.
Rye will push forward in this drink and a lot of connoisseurs swear this is the way it should be made. The bite cuts through a sweet profile and I find an extra dash of bitters fills this version out nicely. Grainy spice hits you on the back of the tongue with a smokiness.
To say nothing of geographical prejudice Bourbon reigns supreme in the Old Fashioned cocktail. I prefer Buffalo Trace. Good by itself on a rock this brand of Kentucky’s finest shines bright and plays all friendly-like alongside the bitter-sweet-citrus-rich-depth. A caramel sweetness and smooth bourbon texture leads the waltz in this prohibitions most infamous derivation.
The most important tenet here is to use what you like. Make the drink especially your way. That’s what great about mixing cocktails. It’s like a homemade salad, putting in things you like will greatly increase the odds it will be delicious. Of course, this goes without saying but as always I will say it … please use fresh oranges! Navels are the best for color presentation but some Florida or Mexican oranges from your local Spanish market are just as flavorful.
So, here’s my recipe.
In a rocks glass:
2 bar spoons raw sugar cane or ½ oz simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 thick piece of orange rind/ bend or twist it over the glass to express the oils, wipe it around the rim and drop it in
Muddle all of that together
Add 2 oz Buffalo Trace Bourbon
1 cube of ice
Stir
Drop in one Bordeaux cherry along with a little of the syrup from the jar, don’t stir
And there you have it, folks. The Old Fashioned cocktail.
You don’t need to be Ernest Hemingway or Jon Hamm to imbibe. You can enjoy this Old Fashioned in a vintage high back paisley print chair in a speakeasy or an adirondack on a patio or even sitting at your writing desk typing up an article about said drink, just sayin’. It’s also the perfect accompaniment for almost any cigar pairing. It won’t blow your taste buds out for dinner or dessert. Make it with rum or brandy or whatever spirit suits your fancy. To answer our earlier question of why the Old Fashioned has persevered so well is, well, it’s the perfect cocktail.
Prohibition has been repealed but the world remains a crazy place teaming with extremely interesting people. So have yourself an Old Fashioned and talk to some. Most of all, enjoy life. You deserve it.