It’s nearly Thanksgiving in the United States, and my wife commissioned me to invent a harvest-themed cocktail for our traditional family dinner. To guide my thoughts, she suggested a palette of autumn flavors that would complement her dinner: bourbon, cranberry, orange and maple. (It’s going to be a very good dinner…)
It’s a small gathering: my wife, my sister and her husband, and me. My bride is very sensitive to bitters and amari, and just plain doesn’t like sweet vermouth, so any normal recipe strategy is a non-starter from the get-go. To add richness to the puzzle, my brother-in-law doesn’t really like sweet drinks (neither do I), and my sister is a Negroni drinker, not naturally attracted to sours. So that’s interesting.
After some pleasant iterations, we set aside the maple, added some citrus interest, and ended up with two workable candidates for Thursday’s cocktail menu. It was fun to work out new recipes, and I was eager to name them and publish them here. I subscribe to the theory that there are no “new” new drinks, only variants of things already known, and these offspring should be named to reflect their heritage, the way race horses are named to suggest their lineage.
I began my research to see whose family tree I was climbing. Hours of googling and page turning turned up nothing. That was exciting—I was sensing that my “new” new drink theory was crumbling to my advantage; original invention is a heady concept for a beginning cocktail designer.
But no.
Just as I was about to end my search and declare myself Impossibly Brilliant, Eric Felten’s How’s Your Drink handed me a dose of humility in the form of:
(via Felten)
- 1¾ oz bourbon
- 1 oz triple sec
- 1 oz cranberry juice cocktail
- juice of ½ lime (or less, if too tart)
Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass with ice. Garnish with a slice of orange and a wedge of lime.
According to Felten, the Bardstown Sling was the winner of the 2004 Kentucky Bourbon Festival’s Mixed Drink Challenge. Alas! that he doesn’t give us the name of its maker.
(I confess to a certain pride in independent reinvention of a drink that garnered competitive attention.)
The version we came up with here at Cold Glass is slightly different in proportions, but otherwise so similar that it can’t even support a different name:
- 1½ oz bourbon (McKenna, Buffalo Trace, Bulleit)
- ¾ oz Cointreau
- ½ oz straight cranberry juice (not cocktail)
- ½ oz fresh lime juice
Shake with ice; strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange.
This version has a slightly larger proportion of bourbon (how could the Kentucky Bourbon Festival have missed that opportunity?), and uses straight cranberry juice to amp up the tart berry flavor and avoid some of the corn-syrup sweetness of “cranberry cocktail” products. That sweetness works in Cosmopolitans; it doesn’t work here.
Optionally, you can make a pleasant tall drink with this same recipe, a sort of “Bardstown Collins,” by serving in a tall glass over ice and topping up with soda.
Meanwhile, if you aren’t in the mood for a sour, you can use this same model, less the lime, for something you might call:
- 2 oz bourbon (McKenna)
- ½–¾ oz Cointreau
- ½–¾ oz straight cranberry juice (not cranberry cocktail)
Shake with ice; strain into a chilled rocks glass. Express with orange, rub the glass rim with the peel, and add into the drink. Ice cube optional.
I’ll grant that this plays fast and loose with the canonical Old-Fashioned. It follows the seam between Old-Fashioneds and Sours. But it works. And if you get proper cranberry juice, it’s an inspiring color of red.
So I didn’t exactly fulfill my “new cocktail” commission, but I did come up with something that the family will enjoy, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
And that is something to be thankful for.
“Cranberry and Bourbon: Reinventing the Bardstown Sling” at cold-glass.com : All text and photos © 2011 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved.
Cold Glass 
And I, for one, cannot wait to sample each well-designed version of this harvest time drink. Looking forward to a fun day of good food and drink, thinking of family near and far, and giving thanks for all we have. Happy Thanksgiving! Your Sister
Just found you online and this looked so inviting that I had to try it. Thank you. It’s delicious! I add 2 dashes of some homemade cranberry-anise bitters and whoa. Well done.
Cranberry-anise bitters, that’s an interesting idea, and sounds delicious. (Do you make those yourself?)
I’ve been looking for some great cranberry-bourbon recipes, so thanks for these ideas! Some R&D is obviously required.
Bardstown is certainly one of my favorites so far, I hope you enjoy it.
It’s tasty! My wife and tried a middle-of-the-road version of the recipes above and then tried a similar version that omitted the orange and lime flavors. We’ve landed on this recipe below that we’ve dubbed “The Merry Pilgrim.”
http://mediocrepolymath.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-merry-pilgrim.html
Thanks again for the ideas!
Looks good, Dave; I look forward to giving it a try.
Triple sec works great! Just cut back on the lime, but don’t leave it out altogether because it adds an aftertaste of diminished tartness that is quite refreshing.
My bf poured whisky over ice for me one night this week. It was alot, about half a stemless wine glass. He had a rough day at work lol. When I said I didn’t wait it, he stuck it in the freezer. Three or four days later, I saw it still in there and pulled it out, worried it had cracked the glass or something. The glass was fine and as the ice started melting, I noticed it developed a weird shape and consistency, almost like a slushie. I stuck the glass back in the freezer until last night when I felt inspired to make a cocktail.
I squeezed 3 cuties on top of the whisky and ice slushie, added a generous pour of organic cranberry juice (no sugar) and then I added a 1 inch by 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch piece of ginger, shredded down to fine little pieces.
Glass was about 2/3 full when I finished so i didn’t add tons of liquid; just enough to add some flavor and take the edge off the whisky. Omg it was amazing! I wanted to name it after me but figured I should Google it first. It sounds really similar to this but the ginger gives a nice twist. Maybe I could call it the Gingertown Sling, according to ur naming theory :)
Gingertown Sling, I like that! And the ginger component with the juice and whiskey is intriguing, I’ll have to experiment with that. Thanks!
It’s cold out, and I’m averse to getting in the car anymore today. I was armed with lemons, but no limes.
Can we call the lemon variation the Bardstown Schwing?
Why not? Go for it.
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Try substituting pure pomegranate juice for cranberry and increase the bourbon by 20%
Pomegranate would make an interesting substitution here.