Kentucky Buck

A refreshing bourbon cocktail with muddled strawberry and ginger beer, offering bright fruit flavors with a spicy finish.

The Kentucky Buck was created by Erick Castro in 2009 when he was hired as beverage director to open Rickhouse, a whiskey-focused cocktail bar in San Francisco's Financial District and sister venue to the influential Bourbon & Branch. The bar needed a crowd-pleasing bourbon cocktail accessible to drinkers who didn't yet love whiskey on its own. Castro built one by muddling a fresh strawberry into bourbon, brightening it with lemon juice, and extending it with ginger beer and a dash of bitters. The template he chose was the Buck — a cocktail family that dates to the 1890s, predating the Moscow Mule by half a century. A Buck is simply a spirit combined with ginger beer and citrus, named because the ginger's peppery heat gives the drink a pronounced kick. The Mule, Dark 'n' Stormy, and their many descendants are all later variations on this older format. Castro's version modernized the template with the strawberry addition, which softened the bourbon's edge while giving the drink a seasonal freshness that made it broadly accessible. The drink spread nationally through bartender word of mouth at a time when San Francisco was setting the agenda for American cocktail culture, and Imbibe Magazine formally named it a modern classic in 2014. Castro has since become one of the most recognized bartenders in the United States, and the Kentucky Buck remains his most influential individual creation.