Make the Best Old Fashioned You've Ever Had With These 15 Whiskies

Food & Wine Magazine | Brian Freedman | APril 25, 2023

[Excerpt]

Your choice of whiskey can make a real difference in this classic, simple cocktail.

The Old Fashioned is as classic a cocktail as exists in the American canon, yet over the generations, the core concept of combining spirit, sugar, and bitters has gotten muddled (sorry-not-sorry for the pun!). Too often, an order of an Old Fashioned results in what I like to call a boozy fruit salad, with mushed-up orange slices releasing intense pith-derived bitterness into the drink, a constellation of neon-hued cherries making the liquid itself little more than a hangover-inducing delivery system for sugar. But a great one can take three standard ingredients and create magic.

In order to compile this list of top whiskeys for Old Fashioned cocktails, I took a measured approach: I carefully measured out the same amount of syrup for each and every one of the dozens of Old Fashioneds I made (I used pre-made Demerara syrup from Twisted Alchemy, which is a nice middle-ground between white and brown sugar, and highlights the wood-aging notes of the whiskeys, in my experience), as well as Angostura bitters. I tasted everything garnish-free and then with oils expressed from an orange peel, which covered up many of the more minute differences between the whiskies. The notes below are based on iterations of the drinks prior to the addition of the orange oils.

Several things became clear over the course of my tastings. Anywhere between 95 and 105 proof seemed to be something of a sweet spot for the whiskeys, allowing the cocktail’s components to express themselves nicely — the added alcohol percentage prevented the drink from getting too diluted as the ice melted. Time and again, barrel-strength whiskies that are spectacular on their own just didn’t shine as brightly as I’d hoped in my Old Fashioned tastings. This could be a personal preference, but the spirit-forward character of them, which I love when sipping, just didn’t lend itself to a particularly harmonious Old Fashioned.

I also was surprised to find that several whiskeys that I love neat or on the rocks just didn’t sing in an Old Fashioned. Some came off as too sweet or unbalanced, while others felt too focused on the spice of the bitters.

There are several whiskeys that make terrific Old Fashioned cocktails that are not included here, but could have been, and should also be part of your Old Fashioned rotation. Among those are delicious bottles from Uncle Nearest, Hirsch, Cooper’s Craft, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester, Michter’s, Yellow Rose, Milam & Greene, Old Elk, Old Grand-Dad, Old Overholt, Elijah Craig, and TX Whiskey, among others. I also didn’t include any flavored whiskeys, but the Journeyman Distillery Pit-Spitter Cherry Flavored Whiskey is one to look for, and makes a great Old Fashioned that’s reminiscent of dark-cherry-filled chocolate ganache. There’s also been a great leap forward in pre-batched Old Fashioned cocktails; among the best I’ve tasted recently comes from Bluebird Distilling.

I focused my tasting on American whiskeys, stressing a balance between familiar bottles and less-famous ones that are well worth space on your shelf, though there are any number of fantastic rye-forward Canadian whiskeys that make great Old Fashioned cocktails, such as Crown Royal and Alberta Premium. Among Irish whiskeys, the new Powers Rye makes a spectacular version. (Rye, incidentally, is a great go-to for Old Fashioned cocktails, as its inherent spice serves as a smart counterpoint to the sweetness of the added sugar.)

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