Presented with the challenge by the good folks at Old Forester to create the perfect cocktail to celebrate Repeal Day, I couldn’t turn down the chance to give it a go (especially combined with the offer to head down to Jake’s Bar first to learn the skills needed to make an excellent cocktail from Dave the general manager!).

Here’s my Old Forester cocktail creation and the story behind it!

A celebration of taste and tradition

For those of you unfamiliar with Old Forester, this is a bourbon that has been around before (all the way back to 1870), during and of course after prohibition.

As the first bourbon to be sold out of a bottle, George Garvin Brown put his name on every bottle to guarantee the quality of his product. This still happens today.

Signed, sealed and delivered.

Things are never straightforward for distillers, though, and in the USA this was no truer than during the era of prohibition from 1919 to 1933 (the constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages).

While many other distillers fled the USA during the prohibition era, leaving the name of their brand alive but their histories and traditions destroyed, Old Forester managed to keep going and kept improving and perfecting the 1870 recipe. So, when repeal came, the people of the USA (and nowadays people across the globe) had a bourbon to hand that had continued to thrive and innovate and wasn’t left trying to rebuild itself.

For that reason, no doubt those first sips of Kentucky’s finest bourbon would have tasted even sweeter on Repeal Day, December 5th 1933.

Inspired by this sweet taste from history, here is my celebration of Repeal Day: The Old Forester Kentucky crème crush.

Ingredients

50cl of Old Forester

25cl of Crème de cassis

25cl of lemon juice (freshly squeezed if possible)

A teaspoon of sugar

4 blackberries

Plenty of ice!

Method

Grab your cocktail shaker and the rest of your kit while popping some ice in your serving glass to get it nice and chilled! While your glass is chilling, grab your shaker and fill it with ice cubes.

Pour in your Old Forester and then your equal parts of Crème de cassis and lemon juice and give it a taste. Pop the top on your shaker and get shaking (this will require some serious arm muscles!) until it sounds soft.

Then, try it again to make sure that the flavour still remains the same while you add your sugar to make sure you are happy with the balance before stirring it all into the cocktail.

Getting everything ready!

Once you’re happy with the balance, pour the ice out of your nicely chilled glass and get your drink in there!

Once your drink is in, pop three blackberries on top next to where you are going to be drinking from to help enhance that sweet flavour and excite your sense of smell. Then, carefully rub a blackberry around the rim of the glass (wiping down any mess!) to leave your lucky recipient with that lingering sense of the drink on their fingers and in the air around them as the aroma fills the room.

Finally, relax and raise a glass of The Old Forester Kentucky crème crush to celebrate Repeal Day and to say a big thanks to George Garvin Brown!

Hopefully you should be able to taste the nice sweet elements of the Crème de cassis that blends beautifully with the complex levels of the Old Forester, leaving you with a refreshing after-taste as the bitterness of the lemon juice kicks in.

The Old Forester Kentucky crème crush

I was invited to take part in the Repeal Day Blogger Challenge by Old Forester and was given a bottle of Old Forester, a cocktail making kit and a cocktail masterclass at Jake’s Bar. All opinions and creations are my own.