Improved Whiskey Cocktail

The Old Fashioned is hardly a drink that needs improvement: The simple combination of bourbon or rye whiskey, bitters, and sugar has been one of the most beloved cocktails in existence for 200-plus years.

But the dictionary definition of “improve” doesn’t quite apply to drinks. At the time, this was a genuine improvement in at least one way - making simply syrup in the glass from a sugar cube isn't exactly efficient. That being said, at one time, what we now call Old Fashioned-style cocktails were synonymous with, well, cocktails, which almost always followed the same formula: spirit, sugar, water, and bitters. The Old Fashioned as we know it today was simply called the Whiskey Cocktail, a Brandy Old Fashioned was a Brandy Cocktail, and so on. In the late 1800s, bartenders began “improving” these drinks with the addition of imported European ingredients such as maraschino liqueur, absinthe, and curaçao. Because of the limited cocktail canon at the time, this handful of ingredients made a world of difference in the possibilities of drinks-making.