Old Fashioned

The original cocktail — bourbon, sugar, bitters, and a twist of citrus.

On 13 May 1806 a reader of The Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper in Hudson, New York, wrote in to ask what a "cock-tail" was. Editor Harry Croswell answered that it was a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters, vulgarly called a bittered sling. That is the first known published definition of the cocktail, and it describes this drink. Cocktail was not yet a word for mixed drinks in general. It named one specific four-part formula, and the Old Fashioned is that formula still standing. The spirit was whatever was to hand: rum, brandy and gin all appear in early accounts. Gin at the time meant genever, the malty ancestor from the Netherlands and Belgium that Americans knew as Holland gin, or simply Hollands; London dry did not take hold in America until around 1890. American whiskey became the default choice later. The name came much later. By the late 1800s bartenders were building far more elaborate drinks and still calling them cocktails, so a guest who wanted the original had to ask for one made the old fashioned way. The Pendennis Club in Louisville is often credited with the name, though the claim is disputed and the drink itself predates the club by decades. Early cocktails were also a morning affair. A reference from 1803 has the drink taken around eleven to clear the head, which is what "stimulating liquor" meant in practice: a restorative, frequently for the night before. In the White House, Harry and Bess Truman are said to have found the by-the-book version too sweet, until the butler simply poured bourbon over ice. Read about the White House drinks

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