The name of this cocktail used to be very creative, Whiskey Cocktail. But it changed over the time and now we call it Old Fashioned.

We can say that this cocktail is as old as the cocktail history because the recipe is almost the same. Spirit, sugar and bitters, this is the base of the cocktails.

While it was a sobering morning cocktail at first, it later evolves into an after-dinner cocktail.

In the 1840s, because it was called only a “whiskey cocktail”, bartenders started to develop their creativity and adding different liqueurs and ingredients such as orange liqueur, absinthe, orgeat etc. The patrons of the first version of whiskey cocktail start to order by saying “Bring us an Old Fashioned version”. Therefore, after a while, our whiskey cocktail became the Old Fashioned.

The first mention from Old Fashioned was in Chicago Daily Tribune in February 1880. But there is an urban legend that the Pendennis Club, the gentlemen’s club, claimed to have invented the cocktail themselves, but this claim was made in 1881 and was not well accepted because it was published in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1880. Can it be said that this situation brought a bad reputation? No, after all, whenever someone wants to know the origin story of this cocktail, they are also mentioned.

The state of Louisville also benefits from this fame and in 2015 declared Old Fashioned as city’s official cocktail. Every year, the first two weeks of June are celebrated as “Old Fashioned Fortnight” in this state, and June 14th is National Bourbon Day.

In short, this was our way from a simple whiskey cocktail to a world-famous classic. Surprise yourself today and have a glass of Old Fashioned.