The History of the Old Fashioned

The Old Fashioned has a unique distinction in cocktail history: it is the original cocktail, not in the metaphorical sense of being classic and traditional, but in the literal sense that the 1806 newspaper definition of a "cocktail" — spirit, sugar, water, bitters — is simply a recipe for what we now call an Old Fashioned. Every other cocktail is a departure from this baseline. The Old Fashioned is the source.

The Original "Cocktail"

The 1806 Definition Revisited

When the Balance and Columbian Repository published its definition of a "cocktail" in May 1806, it was describing something that already existed in practice. Tavern records from the 1790s include entries for "whiskey cocktails" and "gin cocktails" — spirit, sugar, water, and bitters — that are structurally identical to the modern Old Fashioned. The name "Old Fashioned" did not appear until much later; these were simply called "cocktails."

The drink persisted through the nineteenth century as a reference point: the simplest possible combination of spirit and modifiers. As cocktail culture grew more elaborate — adding liqueurs, more complex bitters, fresh citrus, and elaborate garnishes — some drinkers, particularly older ones, asked their bartenders for their whiskey "in the old-fashioned way." From this request emerged the name.

The Old Fashioned Template

The Old Fashioned is the founding template of a family of drinks: spirit, sweetener, bitters, served over ice (or neat) with minimal dilution. The Sazerac is a variation — rye or cognac, absinthe rinse, Peychaud's bitters, sugar. The Toronto uses Canadian whisky and Fernet-Branca. The Oaxacan Old Fashioned, David Chang's creation popularized at Death and Co, uses tequila and mezcal. The template is infinitely adaptable because it is minimal: change any element and you have a new drink in a direct lineage from the original.

The Pendennis Club Claim

Louisville's Contribution

The Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky, has long claimed credit for the Old Fashioned, asserting that the drink was invented there in the 1880s by a bartender for a bourbon distiller named James E. Pepper. Pepper allegedly brought the recipe to the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, spreading it to a wider audience.

The claim is plausible in its details but confused in its premise. The Pendennis Club may well have served an excellent version of the Old Fashioned in the 1880s, and its particular combination of bourbon, muddled sugar, bitters, and citrus garnish may have influenced the drink's standardization. But the drink itself — spirit, sugar, water, bitters — predates the club by at least eighty years. The Pendennis Club may have refined a particular version; it did not invent the category.

Louisville's association with the Old Fashioned is not historically false, however. Kentucky bourbon and the Old Fashioned are so closely linked in practice that the drink is sometimes called a "Bourbon Old Fashioned" to distinguish it from versions made with rye, brandy, or rum. The Kentucky Derby mint julep may get more attention, but the Old Fashioned is bourbon's truest cocktail expression — spirit, sweetener, bitters, nothing to hide behind.

The Muddling Debate

Fruit in the Glass: Yes or No?

No aspect of the Old Fashioned generates more passion than the question of muddled fruit. The version served at many American bars — particularly in the Midwest — involves muddling an orange slice and a maraschino cherry in the glass before adding whiskey and bitters. Purists regard this as an abomination. The argument has the intensity of a religious schism.

The historical record supports the purists, sort of. Early Old Fashioned recipes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries specify a sugar cube, bitters, and water — occasionally a lemon twist or orange peel for garnish. The muddled fruit version appears to be a mid-twentieth-century innovation, associated with Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, where the drink is often served over brandy rather than whiskey and garnished with a cherry and orange so heavily muddled that the whole glass turns red.

The Wisconsin Old Fashioned is not wrong — it is a regional variation with a genuine history and a devoted following. But it is not what the 1806 definition specified, and it is not what most craft bartenders mean when they make an Old Fashioned today. The craft revival's Old Fashioned is spirit, sugar cube (dissolved with a few dashes of bitters and a splash of water), ice, expressed orange peel: direct, spirit-forward, uncluttered.

The Muddling Question

The muddling debate extends to the sugar itself. Some bartenders Muddling the sugar cube directly in the glass, dissolving it with bitters and a few drops of water before adding spirit. Others use simple syrup or demerara syrup — a more efficient delivery of Sweetness that eliminates the risk of undissolved sugar at the bottom of the glass. Both approaches are defensible; both have advocates among serious bartenders.

Modern Revival

Death and Co and the Contemporary Old Fashioned

When Death and Co opened in New York's East Village in 2006, the Old Fashioned was on the menu, but the bartenders were not making the same drink every time. They were treating it as a platform for exploration: different whiskeys, different bitters (Angostura, Peychaud's, Angostura orange, Bittermen's), different sweeteners (simple, demerara, honey). The Oaxacan Old Fashioned — tequila and mezcal, split base, agave syrup — became one of the most influential cocktail innovations of the era.

This approach — treating a classic as a template rather than a fixed recipe — became characteristic of the craft revival. The Old Fashioned's minimalism made it ideal for this exploration: with so few ingredients, every variation was immediately perceptible. Change the whiskey from bourbon to rye and the drink becomes spicier, drier. Change the sweetener from white sugar to demerara and it becomes richer, with a molasses undertone.

The Old Fashioned is now among the most ordered cocktails in the United States. It has survived Prohibition, the dark ages, and the craft revival's tendency to complicate everything it touches. It survives because it is irreducible: the purest expression of what a cocktail is.