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How to make:

1. Select and pre-chill an Old-fashioned glass.
2. Prepare garnish of orange zest twist.
3. STIR all ingredients with ice.
4. STRAIN into ice-filled glass (preferably over a large cube or chunk of block ice).
5. EXPRESS orange zest twist over the cocktail and use as garnish.

Review:

Aromatised, tamed bourbon with complex maraschino notes. Basically, a Whiskey Old Fashioned with maraschino in place of sugar syrup. Surprisingly dry, helped by generous dashes of orange and aromatic bitters.

Variant:

Served straight-up in a sugar-rimmed coupe or Nick & Nora glass.
Improved Whiskey Cocktail

History:

The first known reference to the Fancy Free appears in Crosby Gaige's 1940 Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion.

Fancy Free
1 jigger Fine Arts Whiskey
Dash of Angostura Bitters
Dash of Orange Bitters
2 dashes Maraschino
Frost the rim of a cocktail glass with lemon juice and fine sugar. Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into prepared glass.

Crosby Gaige, 1940

As you can see from the extract above, the Fancy Free was originally a shaken drink served in a sugar-rimmed stemmed cocktail glass; and that's how I first encountered this cocktail back in the 1990s. However, modern bartenders have reworked this cocktail to be an 'improved' Old Fashioned with "improved" referring to the use of maraschino liqueur in place of sugar syrup. Hence, the stemmed glass and sugared rim have gone, giving way to a stirred, on-the-rocks, old-fashioned style cocktail.

More cocktails by Crosby Gaige

Nutrition:

One serving of Fancy Free contains 183 calories.

Alcohol content:

• 1.6 standard drinks
• 30.4% alc./vol. (60.8° proof)
• 22.5 grams of pure alcohol