The Pre-Made Old Fashioned That’s Better Than Your Bartender’s Is Back

Last year, Sunday’s Finest launched the Gold Fashioned, a high-end bottled Old Fashioned made with premium ingredients, and whiskey cocktail fans were all in. This year the Gold Fashioned is back with an even older blend of whiskeys, and this new expression just might top the original.

The team behind the Gold Fashioned is led by esteemed bartender, bar owner and spirits producer Robert Haynes, who made his mark in the Chicago cocktail scene. He launched this RTD in 2021 with a blend of whiskeys from Kentucky and Indiana, bitters, sugar and an orange zest atomizer. At is core, the Old Fashioned is a simple, classic cocktail that could conceivably be ruined by overthinking it. Fortunately, despite Haynes’ elevated take on the drink and its components, it remains minimal and quite delicious. The 2022 version has a split base of three different whiskeys (sources are not disclosed)—15-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon, nine-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon and 6-year-old Indiana rye whiskey (this last one presumably from MGP).

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But that’s not all. The bitters included in the drink are made in-house, a blend of Afghan saffron, French gentian root, Seville orange peel, single-estate Ecuadorian cacao and Tahitian vanilla. And the sugar that sweetens the cocktail, a key ingredient in any Old Fashioned recipe, is fair-trade Demerara from Malawi. Finally, the bottle comes with a mini atomizer to spritz after over the drink made from Valencia, naval and blood oranges. The suggested pour is two ounces over ice, and there are about 10 to 15 servings per bottle.

If you’re thinking to yourself that you could just make an Old Fashioned in your living room with basic ingredients on your home bar, you would be correct. However, the point of this bottled cocktail is indulgence, and we all need a little bit of that sometimes. And in a world that is currently thick with an array of mediocre canned and bottled alcoholic drink options, it’s nice to find one that stands out and is worth the splurge. You can buy Gold Fashioned now on the Sunday’s Finest website, and it will be available via ReserveBar soon (where you can still get the original Gold Fashioned).

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