in fashion

2 oz Four Roses Bourbon
3/4 oz Kasteel Rouge Cherry Lambic
3/4 oz Averna
1 Orange Slice
1 Sugar Cube

Muddle the sugar cube with the orange slice. Add the rest of the ingredients and ice, stir, and double strain into a rocks glass.

Two Tuesdays ago was my birthday, and I decided to treat myself to a birthday bar crawl like I did in 2010. I started my adventure by getting off the subway at Park Street and walking over to J.M. Curley. There, bar manager Kevin Mabry seemed pretty excited about his abstraction of an new-fashioned Old Fashioned that just appeared on the menu called the In Fashion. Keeping the whiskey, orange slice, and sugar cube intact, Kevin replaced the bitters with Averna and the muddled cherry with a cherry-flavored beer.
The In Fashion began with a dark cherry and malt aroma. The sip was a combination of the Averna's caramel and the beer's cherry flavors. On the swallow, the Bourbon paired with the Averna's herbal complexity and hints of the orange peel on the finish. Overall, it was the most innovative take of the new Old Fashioned I have experienced since Max Toste's Hot Old Fashioned last year.