Putting the Finishing Touches on my House Old Fashioned
Which garnish helps bring the drink most to life?
The house Old Fashioned is all but complete. We have the bourbon (Woodinville), the sugar (1:1 turbinado syrup), and the bitters (half Ango, half Aztec Chocolate). What we’re missing is the garnish as the final flourish.
But I realize we’re also missing a recipe. I could have sworn I put this out there initially, but I appear to be wrong. Maybe it got lost in a draft. Who knows…
So let’s rectify that first:
The simple idea is 2 ounces of bourbon, a half ounce of syrup, 4 dashes of bitters, all stirred with ice for a while. You get a drink that’s less than 3 ounces that drinks about as hot as the Martini.
But what goes on top at the last minute? The classic answers (ignoring the 1950s-70s entirely, for good reason) is either an orange peel or a cocktail cherry.
The big difference between the garnishes is whether you augment the nose or the palate. An orange peel expressed over the glass and dropped in lends a ton of zest to the nose because of the oil, but what you actually taste in your mouth isn’t much impacted. Obviously the olfactory addition impacts the taste, but I notice it much more in my nose than in my mouth.
On the flip side, the cherry doesn’t add much to the nose (and in comparison basically has no nose at all) but definitely changes the flavor on your palate, further amplifying the stone fruit. To be fair, the cherry itself isn’t really what does that. It’s the syrup that comes along with the cherry, and I’m always sure to bring as much of that into the glass as I can. It’s a very funky, fruity syrup that adds a ton to the drink.
If I have to choose one, I’m going with the good cherry. But there’s a middle ground here that I also really enjoy that involves using both. Here’s what you do:
Peel an orange
Express the peel over the glass
Put a toothpick through one end of the orange peel
Skewer a cherry with the toothpick (make sure some cherry syrup gets on the orange peel)
Skewer the other end of the orange peel
Add the orange-wrapped-cherry-on-a-stick to the glass
Is that cheating? Probably. Do I care? I do not. This is the best Old Fashioned garnish, and it’s the finishing touch to my house recipe.