Therefore, the Old Fashioned is the answer to the original cocktail. Over the years, the spirits in the recipe for an Old Fashioned have varied between whiskey, rum, gin, cognac and American bourbon. The essence of an Old Fashioned is that it is uncomplicated to make and consists of simple ingredients. However, to make the ingredients come together, you need to take the time to mix your Old Fashioned correctly. While the Old Fashioned was hugely popular in the 1960s, it was almost forgotten for the rest of the century. In the new millennium, however, it started to gain popularity again and today the simple cocktail is a popular choice in many bars. Although the Old Fashioned has evolved over the years, both in terms of ingredients and process, the classic opskrift is still what people associate with an Old Fashioned.
The story starts in 1882. The Trans-American Chicago, Milwaukee, and Pacific Railroad line is being built and, as often happens in the wake of such large-scale construction, new small communities are born. In the agricultural state of Iowa, the town of Templeton.
Templeton was - and still is - a tiny town of less than 400 people, and the world might never have heard its name had it not been for a particularly pivotal period in American history: Prohibition in the United States, which ran from 1920 all the way to 1933.
Prohibition, my ass! In Templeton, Iowa, local farmers and merchants would not put up with government moralizing. They needed strong stuff to fortify themselves in hard times, so they committed civil disobedience and started producing a rye whiskey.
The illegal whiskey was so good that it quickly became known in Templeton and the surrounding area as "The Good Stuff". For many years, the good rye whiskey remained a well-kept local secret, and it wasn't until 2001 that Templeton Rye was introduced to a wider public. And then it goes fast!
Americans LOVE the new, old whiskey and the demand seems insatiable. In 2013, they passed the 1 million bottles per year milestone for the first time, and in 2018, they opened a distillery with a capacity of 2.4 million bottles per year.
Sympathetically, the family-run business maintains its local roots. They are deeply involved in the small community and are on warm and respectful terms with neighbors and farmers in the area. Everything is as it has always been in the small town with the big whiskey.
