Fac Potiones Excellens

preserved cherries
#1: Luxardo™ Marasche^*
#2: Penninsula™ Premium American Cherries^*
lemon (whole, for zest-cutting)
(Citrus limon: Eureka or Santa Theresa)
Peychaud's™ bitters
old-fashioned lump white sugar
(must be dense – do not use modern sugar cubes)
#1: La Perruche™^*
common orange (cut into membrane-free suprèmes)
(Citrus sinensis: Valencia or Navel)
water
(spring, or purified)
service ice
#1: cubes ~1¼ inches per side^*
Tennessee-style whiskey

Instructions

Use the fetcher spoon to help skewer a preserved cherry most the length through and reserve it.
Cut a ~1” wide and ~3” long strip of lemon zest with minimal pith and reserve it.
Set the old-fashioned tumbler in the work area. Into it goes:

• Peychaud's™ bitters — 2 dashes
[1 scruplespoonfull / ¼ tsp. / ~1.25 ml.]
• sugar — 1 lump
(the size is not very important – see step #7)
• common orange — 1 suprèmed segment

[¼ fl-oz. / ~7.5 ml.]

Use the disc of the barspoon, or a bar masher, to crush the above into cocktail water without fully dissolving the sugar.
Remove the tool and take the old-fashioned tumbler to the ice. Into it is added:

• service ice — 1 cube

Return the old-fashioned tumbler to the work area. Into it is added:

• Tennessee-style whiskey — 1 jiggerfull
[2 poniesfull / 2 fl-oz. / ~60 ml.]
• optional service ice — 2^nd cube (if desired)

Garnish the drink with:

• preserved cherry (reserved in step #2) — 1
(placed in the drink with the handle or knob of the skewer on the rim).
• lemon zest (reserved in step #2) — 1 strip
(twisted zest-side-down over the drink, rubbed on the rim, and put into the drink).

Insert the demitasse spoon. Do not stir. Let the drinker stir if more sweetness is desired.
Serve the drink on the napkin, with the spoon standing out at three o'cloock (from the drinker's point of view).

Tipple History

Recipes for Mixed Drinks. New York; Hugo Ensslin, 1917

This drink is much like the fruit-accented Old-fashioned Hoffman House Cocktail of about a decade earlier. But, it calls for different bitters and a different type of American whiskey.

The drink seems to have been named after Bernard "Barney" French, a Manhattan liquor dealer who was active in that place and profession from the 1880's through the moment Prohibition when into effect.

The original recipe for this drink calls for Cascade™ whiskey. That whiskey today goes under the brandname of the founder, George Dickel. Use that, a different Tennessee whiskey, or a Bourbon whiskey that is charcoal filtered, like Evan Williams™ Black Label, for this drink.

As a separate, small matter, I acknowledge that George Dickel, born Georg Dickel, was an immigrant from Germany that spent his entire life as a distiller trying to tell Americans that they spelled 'whiskey' the wrong, Irish way. He used the Scottish spelling. He was entitled to his opinion – even though he was neither American, Scottish, nor Irish. As an American, I don't take my lessons in whiskey spelling from a German.

Compare and contrast with the Old-fashioned Hoffman House Cocktail, and the Old-fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.

Old-fashioned Lump Sugar

The image above is of old-fashioned lump white sugar. Never use modern sugar cubes for archaic, or old-fashioned, Cocktails – nor Slings of any type.
Modern sugar cubes are standardized to the amount of one teaspoonful of granulated sugar. They are porous and will end up fully dissolved into any drink in which they are placed. This means that opting for a lesser amount of sugar requires cutting cubes into pieces. By retruning to the use of old-fashioned sugar for old-fashioned drinks, one will find in the package large, medium and small lumps. Also, lump sugar is dense enough, and the crystals of sugar it is made of are large enough, that any of it not dissolved during the crushing with water into Sling water, Toddy water, or Cocktail water, will remain as a crystaline layer on the bottom of the tumbler. This is why Old-fashioned Slings, Old-fashioned Toddies, and Old-fashioned Cocktails, were served with a spoon in the tumbler. In the case that the drinker wished the drink to be sweeter, he, or she, only had to use the little demitasse spoon supplied to stir more of the sugar up into the drink. This is why I often tell students that when using old-fashioned lump sugar in a Cocktail made the old-fashioned way, even using a large lump in a drink destined for a drinker with dry preference is no problem. Dissolve only a very small amount of the sugar into the Cocktail water. The rest will remain at the bottom unless the drinker wishes to stir. Unless one is using old-fashioned sugar and demitasse spoons, there isn't really any thing old-fashioned about the Old-fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.

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