Cocktail History, Culture & Recipes

The Maple Bourbon Smash is a modern seasonal riff that brings together the deep heritage of American whiskey, the rustic sweetness of maple syrup, and the timeless structure of a “smash”—one of the oldest cocktail templates in American bartending. Earthy, bright, warming, and refreshingly complex, it’s a cocktail that captures the sensory essence of fall and winter in a single glass. I. Origins 1. The “Smash” Cocktail: A 19th-Century Template The Maple Bourbon Smash descends

Few cocktails embody the cozy nostalgia of winter quite like the Gingerbread Old Fashioned —a drink that fuses the oldest cocktail template in American history with the warm, aromatic world of holiday baking. Rich with molasses, spice, and oak, it’s a contemporary seasonal riff that carries centuries of cultural memory: colonial molasses trade routes, early American whiskey culture, European gingerbread traditions, and the 19th-century birth of the Old Fashioned itself. I. Or