We have often been asked by customers for a creation of whiskey creation for old fashioned cocktails. Old fashioned’s are a timeless cocktail whose origins date back to 1806 where the paper, The Balance and Columbian Repository, wrote that a cocktail was essentially defined as a ‘potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water and sugar’. This is essentially the recipe for an old fashioned as all recipes of old fashioned’s contain the following ingredients:

• Sugar
• Angostura bitters (this is the most common, but there are many other options)
• Whiskey
• Orange peel or maraschino cherry for garnish

The Angostura bitters delivers tasting notes are incredibly complex and include spice (clove, cinnamon, pepper), bitter (quinine, gentian, dandelion) & fruity / herbaceous (orange zest, mint).

The general consensus is that the overall spicy bitter flavor of the bitters and sweetness from the sugar is best complemented with a bourbon as this is a more rounded sweet whiskey for old fashioned cocktail. We generally recommend the following barrel selection to customers that love old fashioned’s:

• Rye Bourbon: 90%
• Barley Rye: 10%

This whiskey has wonderful, sweet forward notes of vanilla and caramel at the front, and finishes with wonderous flavors of cocoa, stone fruit and spice.

We also do have customers that want to highlight the spice and love the spicey, drier notes of rye as a whiskey for old fashioned cocktail. For these customers, we recommend the following barrel selection:

• Rye Bourbon: 20%
• Barley Rye: 20%
• Pure Rye: 60%

This whiskey will have a huge depth of spice notes (pepper, cinnamon, all spice) with vanilla, caramel, stone fruit and a hint of smoke.

The above are just our recommendations. Our whiskey builder will allow you to curate your very own perfect whiskey for old fashioned  cocktail from the 21,252 potential combinations that we offer. And if you would like to sample our barrels before creating a full bottle, we highly recommend our whiskey experience where you will get to sample and play with our barrels to create your perfect whiskey recipe that you will redeem for a full-size bottle on our system.

As always, please feel free to reach out to our team with any questions using our contact form or info@designerdram.com.