With craft distilling surging in popularity, there has been a complementary growth in mixology books devoted to single spirits and even individual cocktails. This one is devoted to the Old Fashioned cocktail which, according to some, is more a style or category of mixed drink. The author, Albert W. A. Schmid, argues that the Old Fashioned is, in fact, the original cocktail.Much of the book is devoted to exploring how the ‘Old Fashioned’ came to its name instead of lingering as just ‘cocktail’ or ‘bittered sling’ and how it came to include the muddled orange and cherry. Schmid debunks the legend that the cocktail was invented at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, as there is at least one published mention of the cocktail a year before the Pendennis Club was founded. He suggests that the cocktail as we know it today may well have originated in the venerable old club, but not the original Old Fashioned cocktail.
An Essential Guide to the Original Whiskey Cocktail
by Albert W. A. Schmid
The University Press of Kentucky, 2013
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