Sips & Synopsis
This Weeks Makings.
Thanksgiving is three weeks from today. The cranberries are stacked by the door at the grocery store, and the group text about who's bringing what has already started.
That makes this a good week to settle on a house drink for the holidays. One you can make for six people without a shaker.
In Wisconsin, that drink is the Old Fashioned, and it comes with brandy unless you ask for something else. Orange and cherry get muddled in the glass, the brandy goes in over ice, and a splash of soda goes on top. It's softer and fruitier than the whiskey version, and it takes about two minutes.
In this week's newsletter:
The Wisconsin Brandy Old Fashioned, and the state vote that never finished
How to muddle fruit without making the drink bitter
Two bonus cocktails, one vodka and one tequila
A trivia question about the first time a newspaper defined the word cocktail
A zero proof version with white grape, black tea, and cherry
Trivia Question❓
In what year did an American newspaper first print a definition of the word cocktail?
Answer at the bottom of the newsletter
Wisconsin Brandy Old Fashioned
Brandy, bitters, muddled orange and cherry, and a splash of soda over ice. Soft, fruity, and easy to line up for a crowd.
Ingredients
2 oz brandy
1 sugar cube or 1 teaspoon sugar
3 dashes Angostura bitters
1 orange slice, about 1/4 inch thick
2 cocktail cherries, plus 1 more to garnish
2 oz cold lemon-lime soda (sweet) or grapefruit soda (sour)
Directions
Put the sugar cube in a rocks glass and shake the bitters onto it
Add the orange slice and the 2 cherries
Press with a muddler 4 or 5 times, until the sugar dissolves and the orange gives up its juice. Do not grind the peel
Fill the glass with ice
Add the brandy and stir for about 10 seconds
Top with the soda and garnish with a cherry on a pick
Why It Works
Wisconsin made its Old Fashioned with whiskey first. Somewhere between the 1890s and the 1960s, bartenders switched to brandy and the habit stuck. The popular story says Wisconsin visitors tasted Korbel brandy at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and came home hooked. Jeanette Hurt, who wrote Wisconsin Cocktails, couldn't confirm it. Her research points to the late 1940s, when good whiskey was scarce and a glut of brandy flooded the state. Korbel says Wisconsin still buys more than half of the Korbel brandy it sells (the story is here).
In November 2023 the Wisconsin Assembly voted to make the brandy old fashioned the state cocktail. The Senate never adopted it, so it's still unofficial (the legislative record is here).
Brandy is softer and fruitier than rye or bourbon, so the muddled orange and cherry taste like part of the drink instead of a garnish. The soda stretches it into something you can sip through dinner. Ask for it sweet and you get lemon-lime soda. Ask for it sour and you get grapefruit soda (the regional versions are here). Use an inexpensive American brandy. This drink isn't the place for good cognac.
Behind the Bar - Muddling
Muddling means pressing fruit, herbs, or sugar in the bottom of a glass to release juice and oils. Press and twist. You're squeezing, not smashing.
Orange is the easy one to get wrong. The peel holds bright, fragrant oil. The white pith under it is bitter. A few firm presses get you the oil and the juice. Grind the slice to shreds and the pith ends up in the drink, and you'll taste it in every sip.
How to muddle well:
Use a sturdy glass with a thick bottom. Thin glass can crack.
Muddle before the ice goes in. Ice gets in the way and waters the drink down early.
Let the sugar do some of the work. A sugar cube soaked in bitters acts like sandpaper against the fruit.
Pick a flat-bottomed muddler without teeth. Toothed muddlers shred fruit and herbs.
Stop when the sugar dissolves. Four or five presses is usually enough.
The template underneath:
Sugar, bitters, and fruit muddled in the glass, a spirit over ice, and a splash of soda. Swap the brandy for bourbon and you've got the Wisconsin whiskey version. Skip the fruit and the soda and you're back to the plain Old Fashioned. The same press-and-twist works on the mint in a Mojito or the cucumber in a Garden Gimlet.
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Bonus Cocktails
Two more this week. One vodka and one tequila, and no brandy in either.
Harvey Wallbanger
Vodka and fresh orange juice with a float of Galliano. A screwdriver with vanilla and anise on top.
Ingredients
1.5 oz vodka
4 oz fresh orange juice
0.5 oz Galliano
Orange slice and a cherry to garnish
Directions
Fill a highball glass with ice. Add the vodka and the orange juice and stir. Pour the Galliano slowly over the back of a bar spoon so it floats on top. Garnish with the orange slice and the cherry.
Why it works
Difford's Guide lists Sunday, November 8, as Harvey Wallbanger Day (the drinks calendar is here). The drink took off in 1969, when Galliano's American importer, McKesson, ran an ad campaign led by marketing director George Bednar, starring a cartoon surfer named Harvey. The recipe is credited to Donato “Duke” Antone, a bartending instructor in Hartford, Connecticut. A story that he made it in 1952 for a surfer at a Sunset Strip bar is widely considered made up, and whether Antone invented the drink or renamed an older one is still disputed (the record is here). Floating the Galliano means the first sips smell of vanilla and anise, and it mixes in as you drink. Squeeze the orange juice yourself. Carton juice makes it taste like breakfast.
Oaxaca Old Fashioned
Reposado tequila with a little mezcal, agave, and bitters, stirred. An Old Fashioned with a wisp of smoke.
Ingredients
1.5 oz reposado tequila
0.5 oz mezcal
1 bar spoon agave syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Orange peel to garnish
Directions
Add everything to a mixing glass with ice. Stir for about 30 seconds. Strain over one large ice cube in a rocks glass. Squeeze the orange peel over the top, skin side down, and drop it in.
Why it works
Phil Ward made it at Death & Co in New York around 2007, off the cuff for a regular, and owner David Kaplan is said to have named it (the story is here). It spread fast and introduced a lot of drinkers to mezcal. It's the same template as this week's main drink without the fruit and soda. Spirit, a little sweet, bitters, ice. The mezcal is a small pour on purpose. Half an ounce gives you smoke. A full ounce and the smoke is all you taste. Ward finished his with a flamed orange twist. A squeezed peel works fine at home.
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
Mocktail or Zero Proof Option
The Zero Proof Supper Club Old Fashioned
White grape juice and black tea stand in for the brandy. Same muddled orange and cherry, same splash of soda.
Ingredients
1 oz unsweetened white grape juice
1 oz strong black tea, cooled
1 sugar cube or 1 teaspoon sugar
1 orange slice
2 cocktail cherries, plus 1 more to garnish
2 dashes non-alcoholic aromatic bitters
2 oz cold lemon-lime soda
Directions
Put the sugar, orange slice, and cherries in a rocks glass and press 4 or 5 times. Add the bitters, the grape juice, and the tea. Fill with ice and stir. Top with the soda and garnish with a cherry.
Brandy is made from grapes, so white grape juice brings the fruit. Black tea brings the dry, grippy finish that keeps it from tasting like juice. Regular aromatic bitters are about 45 percent alcohol, so look for a bottle labeled non-alcoholic if you're keeping it fully zero proof.
💡 Answer to Trivia Question:
1806.
On May 13, 1806, The Balance, and Columbian Repository, a newspaper in Hudson, New York, answered a reader who asked what a cock-tail was. The editor wrote that it was “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters” (the definition is here). That's an Old Fashioned. By the 1860s bartenders were adding curaçao, absinthe, and other liqueurs, and drinkers who wanted the plain version started asking for it the old-fashioned way. The Chicago Daily Tribune printed the phrase old-fashioned cocktails in 1880, the earliest known use (the history is here).
🏁 Closing Time
Thanksgiving is three weeks out, and the group text will keep going until then.
Buy one bottle of brandy and a jar of good cherries this weekend. Make an Old Fashioned on Friday night. If the house likes it, line up the glasses with sugar and bitters on Thanksgiving afternoon and add the brandy and soda as people walk in.
Until next week,
Andrea
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This content is intended for readers of legal drinking age and is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Please drink responsibly.
