Neither trained in the mixing arts nor a mad genius behind the bar. Whether you need dozens of different bespoke cocktails created for an afternoon tasting event or one day-long in-depth clinic on a single bourbon, he should be your first call. Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter. That's where he blew my mind with the basic elements and showed me a pathway to their wild possibilities and elegant limits. Anything categorized as "old fashioned" was sure to be fussy and complicated with a steep learning curve like sewing my own clothes. Then my friend and cocktail expert Jared Schubert called me one summer day to assist him like a vagabond Vanna while he gave a talk and demonstration on the Old-Fashioned at a music festival's bourbon tent. Once upon a time, I thought mixing cocktails - anything more complicated than liquor + mixer, really - was an activity best left to the professionals. If we can do that with a cocktail, is there another part of life to which we could apply the same simplified rigor? But there is something to be said for the practice of stripping all the complicated extras and conveniences we pile onto our lives down to reveal the basic elements we need to thrive: Spirits. Maybe a "saner, quieter, slower life" in practice sounds appealing but out of reach. Life is hard ordering an Old-Fashioned is easy. (History just repeats itself, doesn't it?) "The Old-Fashioned," Wondrich writes, "was a drinker's plea for a saner, quieter, slower life." According to David Wondrich's history "Imbibe!," the Old-Fashioned came about as a reaction to the increasingly complex modern mixology inventions of Gilded Age bartenders: Don't make me a whiskey cocktail - with god knows what flourishes and fancies - I'll take an old-fashioned cocktail, please. And while it's easy to believe otherwise, given the dazzling heights to which contemporary bar menus aspire, those four building blocks are all a cocktail requires. What you do with them, though - that's where inspiration, regional tastes and ingenuity come in.įor my money, the Old-Fashioned is the elegant apex of these four elements' harmonious combination. Since the early 1800s, those are the four elements that have defined the cocktail. " The Oracle Pour" is Salon Food's spirits column that helps you decide what to drink tonight.
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