Bourbon and Bitters

Angostura Aromatic Bitters is not that common an ingredient in modern day bartending, but to my mother, it was an integral part of her life. My parents always started off each evening with a cocktail. I never saw them inebriated, but the evening drink was as regular as food on the table. And not just any Martini, Seven and Seven, or Gin and Tonic would do. Those common libations were reserved for our regular pool parties, along with my mother’s legendary Strawberry Daiquiris. No, as I came of age, I also came to appreciate the breadth of their alcoholic repertoire, which included Whiskey Sours, Apricot Sours, Sidecars, El Presidentes, Piña Coladas, and an oddity know simply as an Old Waldorf’s Last. This last somehow blended gin, milk and ice into a frothy mixture that I assure you will challenge the recipe knowledge of virtually any barkeep.

But, high above all these exotic and unusual drinks was the Old Fashioned. According to Wikipedia, it may have been the first true cocktail, since, in response to a reader's letter asking to define the word in an 1806 issue of The Balance and Columbia Repository in Hudson, New York, the paper's editor replied that it was a “potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar: a kind of bittered sling.” The first use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s establishment in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City.

In any case, the Old Fashioned was the defining cocktail for my mother. It is a surprisingly simple drink: Place a couple of large ice cubes in a glass. Add a sugar cube and drizzle it with a dozen or so drops of Angostura Bitters (“By Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II”). Carefully pour in two ounces of bourbon whiskey (it was always Jim Beam, in our house) down the edge of the glass and add a half slice of orange and a maraschino cherry. Don’t stir, but let sit for ten to fifteen minutes as the ingredients slowly meld. This last step is critical to mellow the harsh taste of the bourbon and bitters.

The very name, Old Fashioned, suggests that this is a drink best savored in a dark paneled booth in a downtown San Francisco restaurant, the kind that specializes in Porterhouse steaks and fried calamari, while sitting on a leather banquette after a hard day’s work in the financial district. But that would be too limiting. I have a photograph of my parents playing horseshoes up at White Wolf Lodge in Yosemite, with two Old Fashioneds resting on a stump in the setting sun. I know that her favorite way to concoct one was at our house in Lake Tahoe, where the crisp winter air and a short section of icicle from our eaves substituting for the ice cubes made the drink that much more delicious.

But the Old Fashioned traveled everywhere with my mother. Even when she consented to go trekking through Bhutan with my father, she astounded all by setting up bar on a granite boulder next to a raging river in the Himalayas. She brought out the bourbon, bitters, sugar cubes, orange slices and cherries. The only ingredient missing in that remote al fresco establishment were the ice cubes, but a dash of glacier melt from the river was put to good use. She was not to be denied her slice of familiarity.

Alas, the house at Tahoe is gone, I haven’t been to White Wolf Lodge in decades, and my mother, too, is no longer with us.

But, tonight I bought all the necessaries and made my first attempt at a real Old Fashioned. As my wife and I sat on our porch, with the late afternoon sun filtering beautifully through the green leaves, I waited for my Old Fashioned to meld, and then sipped a toast to my departed mother. She met many contradictions in her life, struggled to become a physician in a world that, at the time, barely appreciated women in that role, and fought against preconceptions of what she could or could not accomplish. But, what I remember most is that she knew what she liked and spoke her mind often. If I can arrive at the end of my days with half the strength that she demonstrated, I will call myself a lucky son.