{"id":57001,"date":"2024-10-30T15:06:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T15:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/post\/what-is-the-best-whiskey-for-an-old-fashioned\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T13:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T13:12:08","slug":"what-is-the-best-whiskey-for-an-old-fashioned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.masterofmalt.com\/blog\/post\/what-is-the-best-whiskey-for-an-old-fashioned\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Best Whiskey for an Old Fashioned?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing quite like an Old Fashioned<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s the classic whisky cocktail<\/a><\/strong>. In fact, the classic cocktail full stop. <\/span><\/p>\n

Most recipes call for bourbon<\/a> or rye as the base ingredient. But how do you know what whiskey is the best for an Old Fashioned cocktail?<\/span><\/p>\n

With Old Fashioned Week on the horizon, we figured now is as good a time as any to take a deeper dive into this thick, rich, sweet concoction to find out.<\/p>\n

\"What

The Old Fashioned cocktail<\/p><\/div>\n

What is an Old Fashioned cocktail?<\/b><\/h3>\n

The Old Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail is a simple mix of spirit (almost always whiskey), sugar, bitters<\/a>, and ice.<\/span><\/p>\n

But m<\/span>any bartenders have made it their own. It’s usually served in a Rocks glass, often called an Old Fashioned glass, and garnished with a citrus peel, sometimes a cherry. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are no fixed rules or laws that distinguish the drink, as there rarely are in the world of cocktails, but you’ll know it when you see it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The history of the Old Fashioned cocktail<\/b><\/h4>\n

The Old Fashioned is often called the oldest cocktail. It came before the Martini and the Manhattan, and some trace it back to the late 18th century. Certainly, it was a fixture in bars by the early 19th century.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first published definition of a \u201ccocktail\u201d was in <\/span>The Balance and Colombian Repository<\/span><\/i> (1806), which called them \u201cspirits of any kind, bitters, sugar and water\u201d. The Old Fashioned is such a pioneer that it\u2019s arguably the model for the original cocktail, and then was simply called the \u201cWhiskey Cocktail\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the first age of the cocktail, inspired by curiosity and creativity, but also often necessity. Back when standards of production weren\u2019t regulated. Rough spirit was common, and the addition of sugar, bitters, citrus \u2013 whatever bartenders could find to embellish and obscure \u2013 was part of the culture that birthed the first cocktails.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cWhiskey Cocktail\u201d<\/b><\/h4>\n

Much like now, bartenders would have their own recipes, but when ordering a \u201cWhiskey Cocktail\u201d, you expected a mix of bitters, sugar, water, and whiskey (often rye). It was typically served in a short-stemmed wine glass. There was often a DIY element to the drink, as bartenders would give you a spoon to make sure your sugar was stirred in and even the bottle to pour. How we long for such trusting days now\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Theodore Proulx\u2019s <\/span>Bartenders\u2019 Manual<\/span><\/i> (1888) is the first cocktail book to contain a recipe for an Old-Fashioned (Proulx is also tied with Harry Johnson for the first cocktail-book appearance of the Martini). <\/span><\/p>\n

Just five years later, in 1893, Chicago hosted the first meeting of the newly-formed International Association of Bartenders, and one of the first items on the agenda was to discuss the proper way to build an Old-Fashioned cocktail. It\u2019s amazing how old mixology really is, isn\u2019t it?<\/span><\/p>\n