Simonson - Three-ingredient cocktails: an opinionated guide to the most enduring drinks in the cocktail canon

A cknowledgments

For their help and contributions, both big and small, Id like to thank Talia Baiocchi, Deborah Berke, Julio Bermejo, Adam Bernbach, Jeff Berry, Greg Boehm, Jacob Briars, Jackson Cannon, Toby Cecchini, Meaghan Dorman, John Dye, Eben Freeman, Dan Greenbaum, Paul Harrington, Jason Kosmas, Brad Thomas Parsons, Del Pedro, Debbie Rizzo, Joaqun Sim, Nick Strangeway, Alan Sytsma, Sother Teague, David Wondrich, and Dushan Zaric. Special thanks to my agent David Black, for his constant help and guidance, and my smart and sane editor Emily Timberlake, who is ever a joy to work with and always gets it. Greatest thanks, as always, to my teenage son, Asher. In not too many years, Asher, youll be 21, and well finally be able to walk into a bar and laugh together over a drink about the weird way Dad makes a living. This will all make more sense in retrospect. I promise you.

A bout the A uthor

ROBERT SIMONSON writes about cocktails, spirits, bars, and bartenders for the New York Times, to which he has contributed since 2000. He is the author of A Proper Drink and The Old-Fashioned, and a contributor to The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails and Savoring Gotham. His writings have appeared in Saveur, Food & Wine, GQ, Lucky Peach, Whisky Advocate, Imbibe, Milwaukee Magazine, and Punch, where he is a contributing editor. He is also coauthor of the cocktail app Modern Classics of the Cocktail Renaissance. A native of Wisconsin, he has lived in New York City since 1988.

O ld- F ashioned C ocktails

By the reasoning of this book, the term Old-Fashioned cocktail means drinks that adhere to the original definition of a cocktail as a simple libation that includes spirit, sugar, and bitters. And, yes, that definition does include the Old-Fashioned.

THE OLD-FASHIONED

If I had wanted to, I could have filled out the recipe portion of this book solely with spins on the Old-Fashioned. The original Old-Fashionedspirits, bitters, and sugaris the three-ingredient granddaddy of the cocktail world. And since bartenders rediscovered the true nature of the drink in the early years of this century (that is, sans seltzer, soda pop, or extraneous fruit), they have been churning out variations on the theme on a daily basis until there are now as many three-ingredient Old-Fashioned twists as there are postal codes. More, probably.

I covered a good many of these new drinks in my 2014 book, The Old-Fashioned: The Worlds First Classic Cocktail, with Recipes and Lore. Here I include a few more.

The Old-Fashioned began its long and tangled journey through American bars as the Whiskey Cocktail, an early-nineteenth-century mix of whiskey, bitters, and sugar that was served in a footed wine glass and often downed as a morning drink. The drink picked up in popularity as the century crawled on. It acquired its current name sometime in the late 1800s, as drinkers, alarmed by all the new-fangled add-ons barkeeps were throwing into drinks (such as maraschino liqueur, absinthe, Curaao, and Chartreuse), began to ask for an Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail. Old-Fashioned became the shorthand term for the drink over time.

The cocktail survived Prohibition but emerged at the other end in a fruitier fashion. A muddled orange slice and cherry, topped with whiskey, bitters, and sometimes soda water, became the common bar treatment and preferred patron style. That construct held for a good long time until modern mixologists brought the drink back to its garbage-free, pre-Prohibition model. The new-old Old-Fashioned was all about simplicity: delicious whiskey, beautiful ice (often a single large cube), and an orange or lemon twista cocktail as imagined by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko: solid, simple, significant.

The world has gone even more Old-Fashioned crazy since my book was published. The inimitable flavor combination has leapt out of the glass and been applied to candles, cheeses, candies, beer, and desserts. Its flattering to the old drink, Im sure, that it has inspired such imitation, but also a bit undignified and diluting. When youve reached a place where cocktail menus have an Old-Fashioned section, with several selections, youre getting very close to the place where the Martini and its many derivative tinis tumbled into the abyss back in the 1990s.

Thankfully, of all the different versions out there, the classic whiskey one is the standard that prevails in popularity by a wide margin. (Ive included a couple worthy post-2012 riffs here as well, for good measure.)

Ogden Nash, a singular unspooler of clever light verse, is well known for a few lines he dashed off in tribute to the Martinithe bit that begins, There is something about a Martini, a tingle, remarkably pleasant. If its been quoted once, its been quoted ten thousand times. Few know, however, that this was just the first stanza of a longer poemapparently written on commission as promotional material for the Continental Distilling Corporationin which many mixed drinks were paid tribute, including the Old-Fashioned. As the rhyme somehow escaped me while researching The Old-Fashioned, I am including it here. We shall forgive Nash the bit about the pineapple slice.

There is something about an old-fashioned

That kindles a cardiac glow;

It is soothing and soft and impassioned

As a lyric by Swinburne or Poe.

There is something about an old-fashioned

When dusk has enveloped the sky,

And it may be the ice,

Or the pineapple slice,

But I strongly suspect its the rye.

O ld- F ashioned W hiskey C ocktail

This is the basic formula for an Old-Fashioned, be it 1887 or 2017. Whether you reach for mellow bourbon or spicy rye is a matter of choice; both work wonderfully in the drink. If youre lacking a muddler (or gumption), a bar spoon of simple syrup will do the job of the sugar cube.

2 ounces bourbon or rye

2 dashes Angostura bitters

1 sugar cube

Orange twist

Saturate a sugar cube with bitters and a bar spoon of warm water at the bottom of an Old-Fashioned glass. Muddle until the sugar dissolves. Add whiskey and stir. Add one large piece of ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Twist a piece of orange zest over the drink and drop into the glass.

T rinidad O ld- F ashioned

TOBY CECCHINI, 2014

It takes a little bit of searching to find the ingredients for this simple but excellent drink. You can order the cider syrup from Woods Cider Mill in Vermont. The other two products you can find in the better boutique liquor stores.

2 ounces Plantation Trinidad Old Reserve rum