blackberry old fashioned

2 oz Wild Turkey 101° Bourbon
3/4 oz Blackberry Honey Sage Syrup
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a double old fashioned glass with a large cube, and garnish with a sage leaf and blackberry on a pick.At Josephine, the management wanted to take the Fall-Winter appropriate Maple-Chestnut Old Fashioned off the menu and tasked me with coming up with something more Spring-Summer worthy. When I got the suggestion of blackberry, a flavor pairing matrix suggested sage. For a sweetener, honey has been underutilized at the bar, so I opted with that to give this complex syrup a third flavor component. No major tricks here in the concept or build, but the end result was a winner that guests ordered again and again in the same seating.

Blackberry Honey Sage Syrup
• 16 oz Honey (by weight)
• 8 oz Water (by weight)
• 12 leaf Sage (med-large leaves, or the equivalent of smaller ones)
• 8 oz Blackberries (by weight)
Add Honey and water in a pot (I weighed them in the pot to avoid loss in transfer).
Bring to a boil. Add sage leaves and continue on low heat for an hour. Let cool.
Remove sage leaves, pour into a blender with blackberries. Blend then strain. For a large batch, I would weigh out 3 parts honey-water-sage and add 1 part blackberry per blender load.