Brandy Old Fashioned (Wisconsin-style)
Muddle ∙ 3 min ∙ 27.1% ABV ∙
The Brandy Old Fashioned is Wisconsin's spin on the Old Fashioned, muddling orange, cherry, and brown sugar syrup with bitters before adding cognac. Muddled orange and cherry give it a jammy sweetness up front, brown sugar rounds the brandy's warmth, and bitters hold the finish from tipping too sweet.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Muddle the first 4 ingredients: Orange 1 wedgeMaraschino cherry 1 pcBrown sugar syrup 5 mlAngostura aromatic bitters 2 dashes in the base of the glass
- Add Cognac 60 ml and a scoop of crushed ice
- Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry on a skewer
Tips
- Muddle the orange wedge and cherry gently with the brown sugar syrup and bitters for only 5-8 seconds; over-muddling shreds the peel's pith and turns the drink bitter.
- Add the cognac to the muddled fruit first and top with a scoop of crushed ice — the ice goes in last, once the syrup and fruit oils have been lifted into the spirit.
- Stir briefly after adding the cognac to lift the muddled fruit off the glass bottom, ensuring the brown sugar syrup fully dissolves rather than pooling underneath.
- Use a fresh orange wedge with the peel on: it is the zest oils released during muddling that define this Wisconsin-style build, which is why the muddle stays gentle enough to leave the pith alone.
History
The Old Fashioned traces to the early 19th century, when a spirit mixed with sugar, water, and bitters was simply called a "cocktail," a definition first published in 1806 in an upstate New York newspaper, The Balance and Columbian Repository. By the 1870s and 1880s, as bartenders began embellishing the whiskey cocktail with liqueurs like absinthe and curacao, drinkers who wanted the plainer, earlier style began asking for it "old-fashioned," and the name stuck. The drink's invention is often credited to a bartender at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen's club founded in 1881 in Louisville, Kentucky, who is said to have made it in honor of whiskey distiller Colonel James E. Pepper and later introduced it to the bar of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Cocktail historians dispute this account, however, since newspapers such as the Chicago Daily Tribune were already discussing "old fashioned cocktails" in 1880, before the Pendennis Club existed, making New York and Chicago rival claimants to the drink's popularization. Wisconsin's brandy version of the Old Fashioned grew out of a separate, later story: at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, the newly opened Korbel winery poured samples of its California brandy, and Central European immigrants from Milwaukee took a liking to it, carrying the brandy home and folding it into their Old Fashioneds in place of whiskey, a substitution that became the region's defining style.
FAQ
What is in a Brandy Old Fashioned?
Orange, maraschino cherry, brown sugar syrup, and Angostura bitters muddled together, then topped with cognac. It's built directly in the glass over ice, so the muddled fruit stays in the drink rather than being strained out.
Is a Brandy Old Fashioned shaken or stirred?
Neither — it's muddled. The orange, cherry, sugar syrup, and bitters are crushed together in the glass to release their juice and oils before the cognac and ice go in.
What glass is a Brandy Old Fashioned served in?
An old-fashioned glass, built over ice with the muddled orange and cherry left in the glass as garnish.
Is a Brandy Old Fashioned the same as a regular Old Fashioned?
No, it swaps the classic's whiskey for cognac, which is the defining feature of the Wisconsin-style version. The muddled orange and cherry are also more prominent here than in a typical whiskey Old Fashioned, giving it a fruitier, sweeter profile.
Is a Brandy Old Fashioned vegan?
Yes, every ingredient in this build — cognac, orange, maraschino cherry, brown sugar syrup, and bitters — is vegan, vegetarian, and lactose-free.
