Volume I

The Old Fashioned

The Founder

As it was always meant to be

Historical context

The Old Fashioned is the oldest named cocktail in the American canon, born from a bartender at the Pendennis Club in Louisville in the 1880s who was asked, by a man tired of novelty, to make "an old fashioned whiskey cocktail." The Founder drinks it because it was there before most of what we call civilization, and he finds this comforting.

Secretary's note: "I have watched men drink this wrong for longer than most of you have been alive. They add things. They muddle things. They — God help them — use a flavored whiskey. The drink existed before any of us and will exist after. The least we can do is not interfere." — The Founder, at the 1997 Annual Conclave, before ending the gathering forty minutes later without explanation.

Ingredients

  • 2½ oz

    Rye whiskey

    High-rye mash of no less than 70% rye grain, aged a minimum of ten years. He keeps a particular bottle that no longer has a label.

  • 1 tsp

    Demerara syrup

    Raw Demerara sugar dissolved in equal parts warm water. Not simple syrup, not agave, not honey.

  • 3 dashes

    Angostura bitters

  • 1 dash

    Peychaud's bitters

    A concession he added sometime in the 1960s and has never explained.

Optional

A single dash of mole bitters, produced by a small operation in Oaxaca that The Secretary has been unable to independently verify still exists.

Method

  1. Begin with a single large cube of ice — hand-cut, never machine-made, never crushed.

  2. In a mixing glass, combine the whiskey, demerara syrup, and both bitters over the ice.

  3. Stir for no fewer than forty rotations over the ice, using a bar spoon held loosely between two fingers. The Founder stirs his own.

  4. Express the oil from a wide strip of orange peel over the surface. Run the peel around the rim, then rest it inside the glass against the ice.

  5. Do not garnish with a cherry. Do not garnish with anything else. Do not suggest it.

GlasswareRocks glass over one large hand-cut ice cube
GarnishOrange peel, expressed and rested inside the glass. Nothing else.
MemberThe Founder →
VolumeVolume I of the Compendium
The Secretary's note

"I have watched men drink this wrong for longer than most of you have been alive. They add things. They muddle things. They — God help them — use a flavored whiskey. The drink existed before any of us and will exist after. The least we can do is not interfere." — The Founder, at the 1997 Annual Conclave, before ending the gathering forty minutes later without explanation.