Billionaire
A herbal and balanced whiskey cocktail ∙ Shake ∙ 3 min ∙ 18.6% ABV ∙
The Billionaire is a whiskey sour of rye and bourbon with lemon, grenadine, sugar syrup, a little absinthe and bitters, shaken and served up.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Shake all ingredients with ice: Rye whiskey 30 mlBourbon 20 mlLemon juice 30 mlGrenadine syrup 10 mlSugar syrup 10 mlAbsinthe 5 mlCreole-style bitters 2 dashesAngostura aromatic bitters 1 dashFresh mint leaves 2 pcs
- Fine strain into the chilled glass
- Garnish with a dehydrated lemon slice floated on the cocktail
Tips
- The two mint leaves go into the shaker whole, not muddled; fine-strain through a mesh strainer to catch the torn bits and ice shards.
History
The Billionaire cocktail was created by Dushan Zaric and Jason Kosmas of Employees Only, a bar in Manhattan's West Village that helped drive New York's craft cocktail revival, in the bar's early years. The pair devised it as a showcase for overproof bourbon, building a whiskey sour-style drink around the high-strength spirit. Only after the recipe took shape did they notice its resemblance to the Prohibition-era Millionaire Cocktail, which inspired the new drink's title as a kind of inflation-adjusted successor.
The original Employees Only formula was built on Wild Turkey Rare Breed bourbon and a house-made absinthe bitters blend of absinthe, green Chartreuse, and Peychaud's bitters rather than the separate absinthe, bitters, and mint used in later adaptations. This recipe follows those adaptations and also splits the base between rye whiskey and bourbon. The recipe was published in Kosmas and Zaric's 2010 book on the bar's cocktails, and other bartenders have since made their own variations, including versions that swap in Campari for the grenadine.
