Not all great bourbon comes from Kentucky, and this Old Fashioned proves it. I reach for an Old Fashioned whenever I want to know what a whiskey is really made of. Three ingredients, nothing to hide behind, so whatever is in the bottle comes through clean. First up is TINCUP 10 Year, made in Colorado on Rocky Mountain water. What sets it apart is the blend. There is Stranahan's single malt whiskey in there alongside the bourbon, so it drinks grain-forward and light at 84 proof, with cherry, pastry dough, and sweet fruit syrup carrying right through the sugar and bitters. Want a higher proof pour? Reach for Pendleton 1910 out of Hood River, Oregon at 90 proof. It brings more maple, clove, rye, and warm baking spice, with a longer oak finish on the back end. Same recipe, two very different drinks, and not a Kentucky zip code between them.

Style is personal. So why should your cocktail try to copy somebody else’s?

I teamed up with my friends at Ralph Lauren Fragrances to build a cocktail around their Ralph’s Club New York Parfum, and the fragrance did most of the talking. Black currant, cognac, oud wood. That’s basically a drink order.

So we built a Manhattan style sipper with cognac as the base, swapped the sweet vermouth for creme de cassis and a touch of dry vermouth, added a barspoon of absinthe and a few dashes of bitters, then finished it with an expressed lemon twist for brightness. Given the NY roots on this bottle, I’m calling it The State of Mind.

Cheers, y’all!

It's like if a Mojito with bit more style…

Together with my friends at @mountgayrum and @devereuxgolf, we're going to add some style to something familiar.

These two brands have teamed up to showcase their shared love of craftsmanship and leisure by putting together a line of limited edition designs that are comfortable enough to wear on a golf course to being stylish enough to wear on a sailboat. Check out the collection in the link in my stories.

The Queen's Park Swizzle is named after the historic Queen's Park Hotel in Port of Spain sometime in the early 1900s. Built with rum, mint, lime, and bitters, it's bright, refreshing, and dangerously easy to drink — basically the Caribbean cousin to a Mojito with a little more spice and depth.

For this version, I'm using @mountgayrum Eclipse Rum, whose warm vanilla, baking spice, and oak notes fit perfectly into the drink's tropical backbone while still letting the mint and bitters shine through.

Cheers, y'all!