Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, The American Gothic!

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Next week’s going to be rough. We’ve got some brutally cold days ahead. Not a time to fool around. Here, have a drink. Specifically, have a take on the Old Fashioned, inspired by the American Trilogy from Little Branch in NYC. I call it the American Gothic. Here’s the recipe:

1 oz Watershed Apple Brandy

1 ½ oz Redemption Rye Whiskey

½ oz cinnamon cherry syrup

1 dropperful Old Forester Smoked Cherry Bitters

Place all ingredients into a cocktail mixing glass and stir with ice until the outside of the glass is cold, 30-45 seconds. Pour over ice into a double old fashioned glass. Garnish with an Amarena cherry and a fresh apple slice.

½ cup demerara sugar

½ cup water

6 dried cherries

1 small (1”) long cinnamon stick

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer and reduce temperature to low heat for 15 minutes. Bottle at once. Will keep in the fridge for weeks.

Bartenders have a habit of naming drinks after their favorite rock and roll, so it’s not a surprise that there’s a cocktail named after this pretentious mashup of “Dixie,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “All My Trials.” It’s Jumpsuit Elvis at his peak. Richard Boccato and Michael McIlroy, the bartenders who wrote the American Trilogy cocktail, used a bit more restraint. The drink was meant to highlight Laird’s Applejack, a 100-proof apple spirit that was popular in 2007. Using rye whiskey and a classic Old Fashioned blueprint to support the Laird’s creates a fantastic drink.

For my version, I wanted more supporting flavors to complement the apple brandy. Cherries and apples work together wonderfully. Cinnamon and apples are a perfect flavor pairing. It was no stretch to add cinnamon cherry syrup to this drink to give it another dimension. The cinnamon also plays into the dry, peppery flavor of rye whiskey. Angostura bitters would be fine here, but I’ve got some smoked cinnamon bitters in my liquor cabinet to use up. More cherry flavor? Heck, yes, go for it. And the smoke layers into the cocktail in between the sweet apple and dark rye perfectly.

Traditionally, an Old Fashioned gets a big orange twist to give you a whiff of citrus as you bring your nose to the glass. An apple slice hits you with fresh apple perfume as you taste the drink, making the apple brandy even more special. It’s a drink that tastes familiar and new at the same time, the kind your black-sheep uncle would have let you sip with a wink while your parents were doing the dishes.

Changing two ingredients in the drink gives me the right to rename it. I thought the glass deserves the name American Gothic, as an homage to the Stephen Wilson Jr. song, a nostalgic piece of rough country music. And as we walk through the ingredients, I can find the memories and broken promises evoked by this song.

Speaking of which, here’s the ingredient list:

Watershed Apple Brandy: The best apple brandy I can find in Ohio. Made locally here in Columbus, these guys have been making some amazing liquor since 2010. A bottle of this stuff will always have pride of place in my home bar.

Redemption Rye: A pure, unadulterated rye whiskey, with no frills, no holding back. Rye whiskey is to bourbon as cornbread is to rye bread — one is sweet and mellow, the other is earthy and spicy. Rye is always my whiskey of choice in an Old Fashioned, and it serves as a strong contrast to the sweet apple brandy in this drink. Redemption is made in a factory in Indiana, and don’t let their marketing hype tell you otherwise. But that’s a story for another day.

Cinnamon Cherry Syrup: There are Old Fashioned fans out there who prefer a dissolved sugar cube in their drinks as opposed to a syrup. They enjoy how the cube breaks down slowly, creating a drink that starts fiercely and ends sweet. I prefer to use a syrup for a consistent drink. More importantly, a house syrup can provide a vehicle for flavors you couldn’t easily get into the glass otherwise.

Smoked Cherry Bitters: I love these bitters. But I despise the corporate overlords who own their maker. Brown-Forman, the same hacks who bought Jack Daniels, own Old Forester. They ended their DEI policies a while back. A few days ago, they fired 600 people and closed the cooperage that makes barrels for Jack. They’re outsourcing that work now, of course. All in the name of a “relentless focus on evolving our strategy” blah blah blah. That cooperage has been in place since the turn of the century. I’ll use up the bottle of bitters and throw it away. Now I need a drink.

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!

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OPEN THREAD! DRINK!