Cynar Old Fashioned

A clever Old Fashioned variant that uses Cynar in place of sugar and bitters, adding earthy artichoke depth to bourbon's caramel warmth.

The Cynar Old Fashioned replaces the Old Fashioned's traditional combination of sugar and Angostura bitters with Cynar — the Italian artichoke amaro first produced in Venice in 1952 by Angelo Dalle Molle — which simultaneously performs both functions. The Old Fashioned itself is one of the oldest named American cocktails, with the format of spirit, sugar, bitters, and water documented in print from the early 19th century onward; the term Old Fashioned as a cocktail name appeared in the 1880s, when the demand for unfussy whiskey-and-bitters drinks was framed as a preference for the old-fashioned way of making a cocktail. Cynar's formula — 13 botanicals including artichoke leaf (Cynara scolymus, which gives the liqueur its name and the genus its botanical designation), along with herbs, caramel, and other bittering agents — produces a flavor that reads simultaneously as savory, earthy, and bittersweet. When combined with bourbon's natural caramel and vanilla from oak aging, or rye's grain spice, the Cynar creates a drink with considerably more complexity than the standard format: the artichoke's faintly vegetal depth plays against the whiskey's sweetness, the bitterness from the liqueur's botanicals stands in for Angostura's aromatic contribution, and the sugar that the liqueur already contains prevents the drink from becoming harsh.