The Old Fashioned Is The Official Cocktail Of One US City
Cocktails have been around for quite some time. In fact, humans have been drinking some sort of fermented alcoholic beverage since pretty much the dawn of time. Historians have traced the first alcoholic beverage all the way back to the Neolithic era, around 7000–6600 BCE, when people in ancient China would drink a fermented mixture of rice, honey, and hawthorn fruit or grapes, according to Penn Museum. A short 500 years later, people of the Middle East would discover a way to ferment grapes to create the world's very first wine.
Just about every civilization has developed its own alcoholic beverages, from distilled rice in India to fermented corn in the Americas, according to Foundation For A Drug-Free World. However, as civilization became more advanced, so did our ways of getting drunk. No longer content to simply get tipsy on sour, distilled fruits and grains, humans began looking for ways to make these boozy beverages more palatable. While adding mixers to cocktails has been around for just about as long as drinking has, the very first cocktail wasn't invented until relatively recently in human history. A cocktail is defined as "a drink that mixes several ingredients, at least one of which is alcoholic, into one complete drink," according to Martha Stewart. And the very first cocktail, so it's said, wasn't invented until 1806.
An Old Fashioned contains spirit, bitters, sugar, and water
According to VinePair, the very first cocktail recipe, which called for a "stimulating liquor composed of any kind of sugar, water and bitters" first appeared in a Hudson, New York newspaper called "The Balance and Columbian Repository" in 1806. While that particular drink was unnamed, it bears a striking resemblance to another classic cocktail that hit the scene in the 1800s. The Old Fashioned is made with "spirit, bitters, sugar, and water." The two contain very similar ingredients — and for good reason. In the early 1800s, the term "old fashioned" was used to refer to a method of preparing the drink, rather than the specific ingredients, according to Whiskey Rebellion Trail.
These days, there are untold varieties of the Old Fashioned. While most people probably know it as a whiskey-based cocktail, earlier versions called for gin or even mezcal. And while the Old Fashioned had likely been around for decades, the first printed recipe didn't appear until 1895, when it was published in George Kappeler's "Modern American Drinks." Unlike the 1806 beverage, this version called for the addition of a twist of lemon peel, and for the beverage to be served in a whiskey glass with a small bar spoon still inside. However, the origins of this classic cocktail are somewhat contested.
Louisville, Kentucky claims to be the hometown of the Old Fashioned
People had been ordering some version of the Old Fashioned since at least the 1860s, according to Whiskey Rebellion Trail. It skyrocketed to popularity at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel bar in New York City in the late 1800s, but many argue that the Big Apple is not the drink's true hometown. In fact, Louisville, Kentucky claims that honor. The spirit allegedly got its name from a bartender named Colonel James E. Pepper, who was working at The Pendennis Club in Louisville when he concocted and named the beverage we now know as an Old Fashioned, according to Thrillist. Pepper then brought the drink to Waldorf-Astoria, where it was made famous at its hotel bar.
The city of Louisville, Kentucky is still quite proud of its famous invention. In fact, they are so pleased with their association with the drink that they named the Old Fashioned the official cocktail of Louisville. Mayor Greg Fischer formally declared the Old Fashioned the city's official cocktail in 2015, cementing Louisville's place in history as the hometown of the popular drink. In recent years, the city has been celebrating its famous cocktail with two weeks of special events and celebrations, beginning on the anniversary of Kentucky's statehood on June 1 and concluding on June 14, which happens to be National Bourbon Day, per KY Bourbon Trail.