Finally, the weather is cooling off a tiny bit. A cool breeze in the air means it is time to start warming back up with a classic whiskey cocktail: the Old Fashioned. If I had to chose only one drink to sip for the rest of my life, it would be this one.
There is nothing worse in my eyes, though, than to watch a bartender muddle a big orange slice into my Old Fashioned. I do not know when this became the trend, but ruining my cocktail breaks my heart. I yearn for a whiskey cocktail — not fruit cocktail. I am, in fact, so offended by the muddling of oranges and cherries in my whiskey, that I decided to embark on research to try and discover the moment when this glorious train went off track.
In Lucius Beebe's foreword to the 1941 Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion, he recounts the reaction of the bartender at Chicago's Drake Hotel to his request for an Old Fashioned sans fruit, which the bartender clearly took as an affront to his honor: "'Young impudent sir,' he screamed ... 'Man and boy I've built Old Fashioned cocktails these 60 years ... and I have never yet had the perverted nastiness of mind to put fruit in an Old Fashioned.'"
It seems that other purists were offended by muddled fruit as early as 1941. And here I thought the perversion would have occurred during the 1980s.