adjective: old-fashioned 1. In or according to styles or types no longer current; not modern. 2. Favouring traditional or conservative ideas or customs. noun: old-fashioned 1. A cocktail consisting chiefly of whisky, bitters, water, and sugar. The origins of the cocktail has been greatly contested and little has been documented, but what we do know is that back in the eighteen hundreds a letter was written to a New York newspaper asking what a cocktail is. The newspaper responds with these four elements… A mixture of spirit – any spirit – plus water, sugar and bitters. Therefore, ‘The Old Fashioned’ is the original old fashioned cocktail. No one really knows if the first old fashioned cocktails contained rye or bourbon, but it seems that most bars prefer to reach for the bourbon sooner than the rye. However, there seems to have been a surge in Old Fashioned variations in bars all over the world. I guess you could call it ‘a modern old fashioned’. One reason that could be said for this recent interest in modernisation …