There’s something timeless about a well-crafted Old Fashioned. Whether it’s made with classic ingredients or given a modern spin, we can’t get enough of this traditional tipple. Take a page out of the cocktail playbook from these hotels named to Forbes Travel Guide’s Verified List of the World’s Best Hotel Bars and concoct your own unique whiskey sip at home.
IRISH ROSE
Boston Harbor Hotel’s Rowes Wharf Bar offers a local take on the classic cocktail.
2½ ounces Tyrconnell Irish whiskey
½ ounce simple syrup
1 dash Boston Bittahs
1 dash Angostura bitters
Stir the whiskey and syrup together, and then add one dash of each bitter and mix. Place empty rocks glass over rose buds that have been smoked on a charcoal slate with a handheld blowtorch. After about 10 seconds, flip the glass over, place in a large ice cube, pour the prepared cocktail and garnish with rose buds.
THE MADE AND THE BORN
Mandarin Oriental, Miami’s MO Bar adds gin into the mix.
2 ounces blended gin (1 ounce each Nolet’s Gin and Tanqueray)
0.5 ounces bourbon syrup*
1 dash Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters
2-inch ice cube
Garnish: Lemon, lime peel, nutmeg powder
*Recipe for bourbon syrup:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1.5 cups water
5 ounces bourbon
Mix sugar and water together in a small saucepan. Boil over medium-high heat for 10 to 15 minutes until reduced by half. Remove from heat and stir in bourbon.
Put ice in the mixing glass. Pour in gin followed by one dash each of Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters. Add bourbon syrup. Stir all ingredients with a bar spoon. Pour drink into a rocks glass, and add a large ice cube. Garnish with lemon and lime peel. Sprinkle with nutmeg.
BATANGAS OLD FASHIONED
This smooth cocktail from The Bar at The Peninsula Manila features bourbon infused with coffee grown in the Batangas province of the Philippines, situated about 100 minutes south of Manila.
2 ounces Batangas-coffee-infused Maker’s Mark bourbon
3 dashes chocolate bitters
2 dashes orange bitters
1 bar spoon La Perruche pure cane sugar
Mix all of the ingredients in a shaker and pour into a chilled glass.
INTO THE WOOD – OLD FASHIONED N°16
The Old Fashioned gets an earthy flair at Le Bristol Paris’s Le Bar du Bristol.
2 ⅓ ounces of ceps- and morel-mushroom-flavored Glenmorangie Scotch
⅔ ounces walnut liqueur
4 drops of fresh plants bitters
Mix all the ingredients in an ice-filled shaker. Pour into a rocks glass over ice.
