The Old Fashioned’s story is a glorious muddle of bourbon, sugar and luck, widely regarded as the ancestor of the modern cocktail. It traces back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries when “cocktail” meant spirits, sugar, water and bitters. The name “Old Fashioned” popped up in the 1880s as patrons requested the simpler, original style of cocktail in response to increasingly elaborate mixed drinkss. One famed claimant is the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky, which allegedly coined the term and sent the recipe to a bartender at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Through Prohibition, speakeasies and the post war cocktail boom, the Old Fashioned endured, becoming a symbol of refined simplicity, an enduring classic resurrected again and again, most recently riding a wave of modern craft cocktail reverence.

At its core an Old Fashioned is gloriously minimal. A spirit (traditionally rye whiskey or bourbon), a sugar source (cube, syrup or even demerara), a few dashes of aromatic bitters, water to dissolve the sugar, and a citrus twist, usually orange, for oils and aroma, all served over a large ice cube. Variations abound include swapping rye for bourbon, brandy (popular in Wisconsin, USA), or rum. Others use different bitters (chocolate or orange) or sweeteners (maple, honey, or amaretto), add a muddled cherry or a cinnamon stick, or smoke the glass for drama. Its popularity surged with Prohibition era nostalgia and again in the 2000s with the cocktail renaissance and craft spirits movement, securing the Old Fashioned’s place as the timeless, go to drink for folks who like their cocktails honest, strong and just a little bit dignified.