Recipe
Recipe from Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- 2oz brandy (I used Copper & Kings)
- 1 sugar cube
- Couple dashes of Angostura bitters
- 1 half wheel of orange
- 1 Luxardo brandied cherry
- Crushed ice
In an old fashioned glass, add your bitters, sugar cube, orange, and cherry. Muddle gently into a paste, avoiding the orange peel (which will add undesired bitterness). Add the brandy and gently stir. Fill with crushed ice and enjoy.
About
Cocktail-folks will be quick to tell you not to muddle orange and cherries in an Old Fashioned. However, in Wisconsin, the Old Fashioned of choice requires exactly this. Sometimes referred to as a “Brandy Old Fashioned,” it’s not just a straight sub of brandy for your typical whiskey, but a completely different style of drink that just happens to share a name. And it is so fantastic.
Wisconsin is oddly enough one of the largest markets for Korbel Brandy (a product made here in northern California). Most likely, this took off when it was marketed during the 1893 World Fair in Chicago, where it gained popularity with the large German population in attendance from nearby Wisconsin (who may have been missing the brandies from their home country). Since then, brandy has been a staple product in the lives of many generations.
This was actually one of the first cocktails I made when I started getting more ‘serious’ into homebartending and still today is a fav. It’s a bit of a fancier version of a classic Brandy Old Fashioned (neon maraschino cherries, cheap Korbel brandy, and topped with a lemon-lime soda), but hey, why settle for anything but the best?