Whiskey Emoji 🥃

OLD FASHIONED
2 oz / 60 ml bourbon or rye
1 sugar cube (or 1 tsp / 5 ml syrup)
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters
Splash of water

Muddle sugar with bitters and water, add whiskey and one big ice cube, stir 20 sec. Twist orange peel over the top, drop it in.
Glass: rocks.
Rye keeps it dry, bourbon rounds it out. The name dates to the 1880s, when drinkers began asking for it made the old-fashioned way.

MANHATTAN
2 oz / 60 ml rye whiskey
1 oz / 30 ml sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir with ice 20-30 sec, strain into a chilled coupe. Brandied cherry.
Glass: coupe.
Rye is the point - the spice cuts the vermouth. Bourbon makes it softer and sweeter. Keep vermouth in the fridge; an open bottle fades in weeks. New York, 1880s.

WHISKEY SOUR
2 oz / 60 ml bourbon
0.75 oz / 22 ml fresh lemon juice
0.75 oz / 22 ml simple syrup
Optional: 1 egg white

With egg white, shake once without ice, then hard with ice. Strain over fresh ice. Angostura dashes on the foam.
Glass: rocks or coupe.
Bourbon is the usual pick; rye makes it sharper. In print in Jerry Thomas's 1862 bartender's guide.

BOULEVARDIER
1.5 oz / 45 ml bourbon
1 oz / 30 ml Campari
1 oz / 30 ml sweet vermouth

Stir with ice, strain over a large cube or into a chilled coupe. Orange twist.
Glass: rocks or coupe.
A Negroni built on bourbon instead of gin; rye works and reads drier. Printed in Harry MacElhone's Barflies and Cocktails, Paris 1927, credited to Erskine Gwynne. The original is equal parts.

SAZERAC
2 oz / 60 ml rye whiskey
1 sugar cube (or 1 tsp / 5 ml syrup)
3-4 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Absinthe, to rinse

Rinse a chilled rocks glass with absinthe, pour off the excess. Stir the rest with ice, strain into the dry glass - no ice in it. Lemon twist expressed, then discarded.
Glass: rocks, served neat.
New Orleans. Began on cognac; rye took over when phylloxera cut French supply.

MINT JULEP
2.5 oz / 75 ml bourbon
0.5 oz / 15 ml simple syrup
8-10 mint leaves

Press the mint into the syrup gently - do not shred it. Add bourbon, pack with crushed ice, stir until the cup frosts, then mound more ice on top. Big mint bouquet, short straw.
Glass: silver julep cup or highball.
Bourbon, not rye. The official drink of the Kentucky Derby since 1938.

HOT TODDY
2 oz / 60 ml whiskey (Scotch, bourbon or Irish)
2 tsp / 10 ml honey
0.5 oz / 15 ml fresh lemon juice
4 oz / 120 ml hot water

Warm the mug first. Stir honey into the hot water, then add lemon and whiskey. Lemon wheel studded with cloves.
Glass: mug or heatproof glass.
Any whiskey works: Scotch brings smoke, bourbon brings vanilla. British and Irish, 18th century.

WHISKY HIGHBALL
2 oz / 60 ml Scotch or Japanese whisky
4-6 oz / 120-180 ml chilled soda water

Fill a tall glass to the rim with ice, pour the whisky, add soda down a bar spoon to keep the fizz, then stir exactly one turn. Lemon twist optional.
Glass: highball.
Blended Scotch is the classic; Japanese whisky built a whole ritual on it. Cold glass, cold soda, hard ice - warm anything flattens it.

🥃 Tumbler Glass, U+1F943

That is the official name, and the closest Unicode comes to whiskey. It entered the standard in
Unicode 9.0 in 2016. There is no whiskey character, no bourbon character and no whiskey bottle – the
only spirits bottle in the set is the sake flask, U+1F376 – so the tumbler carries the whole
category.

The rocks pour is a two-character string: 🥃🧊, tumbler plus Ice Cube,
U+1F9CA, which arrived later in Unicode 12.0 in 2019. Build it that way rather than trusting
the artwork. Vendors disagree about whether the tumbler already holds ice – some draw cubes in the
amber liquid, some draw it clean – and the glass ranges from heavy cut crystal to a plain
straight-sided tumbler.

Whiskey or whisky

Both are correct. Ireland and the United States generally write whiskey; Scotland, Canada and
Japan generally write whisky. The Unicode name uses neither, so the spelling changes nothing but
your search results.

Old Fashioned

• 60 ml bourbon or rye
• 1 sugar cube
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• A splash of water
• Orange twist

1. Put the sugar cube in the glass, soak it with bitters, add a splash of water and crush it to a
   paste.
2. Add the whiskey and one large piece of ice. Stir until cold and slightly diluted.
3. Express an orange twist over the top.

The name is literal: it is the old-fashioned way of making a whiskey cocktail, spirit plus sugar
plus bitters plus water, at a point when newer drinks had grown more elaborate. The muddled orange
slice and maraschino cherry version is a later habit, not the original method.

Sazerac

• 60 ml rye
• 1 sugar cube or 5 ml sugar syrup
• 3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• Absinthe, for the rinse
• Lemon twist

1. Rinse a chilled rocks glass with absinthe and discard the excess. The rinse is the drink’s
   signature – it perfumes the glass rather than flavouring the liquid.
2. Stir rye, sugar and bitters with ice in a separate glass.
3. Strain into the rinsed glass, no ice. Express the lemon twist and, traditionally, discard it.

New Orleans made this one, and Peychaud’s bitters are still made there.

Whiskey Sour

• 60 ml bourbon
• 25 ml lemon juice
• 15 ml sugar syrup
• Egg white, optional

1. If using egg white, shake everything without ice first to build the foam.
2. Add ice and shake again, hard.
3. Strain into a chilled glass. A few drops of bitters on the foam if you used it.

Ward Eight

• 60 ml rye
• 20 ml lemon juice
• 10 ml orange juice
• 10 ml grenadine

1. Shake hard with ice.
2. Strain into a chilled glass.
3. A Boston rye sour named for a ward of the city. Several origin stories circulate and none of
   them can be confirmed.

Why this page sits on this domain

American Prohibition ran from January 1920, when the Volstead Act put the Eighteenth Amendment
into force, until the Twenty-first Amendment repealed it in December 1933. Whiskey never fully left:
pharmacies dispensed it on prescription throughout, which is why medicinal whiskey pints still turn
up in collections. Drinks like the Old Fashioned outlived the law that made them useful.

• Same character, different intent: shot emoji covers the shot-glass gap
  and short serves.
• For the V-bowl and its drinks, see martini emoji. To test whether you
  know these by sight, try guess the drink by emoji.