Old Fashion Cocktail

Not So Old-Fashioned

Mixologists shake up a splash from the past

Ashley Breeding Restaurants

Old Fashion Cocktail

A classic cocktail is defined as an alcoholic mixed beverage that contains three things: a spirit, something sweet, and something sour. Post-Prohibition era, tradition turned to include artificial mixers, sodas, and other unnatural ingredients (the average maraschino cherry is preserved in formaldehyde).

“We’re now seeing a return to original cocktails — how they were made in the 1920s to the ’50s,” says Jonny Barr, director of beverages and brand ambassador for Eureka! restaurant in Indian Wells. The gourmet burger joint’s bar boasts a selection of “rootsy” cocktails, such as the hand-squeezed margarita and the whiskey sour stirred with egg whites, and uses only natural, fresh ingredients and small-batch spirits from U.S. distilleries.

“Our No. 1 selling cocktail is the old-fashioned,” Barr says. “Hands down.”

The new old-fashioned is made with rye whiskey, a raw sugar cube, and bitters stirred over ice, shaken and strained into a glass over a block of ice, and then garnished with an orange peel and hand-picked maraschino cherries aged in brandy. The bee’s knees if you ask us.