Black Cedar Old Fashioned
A spirit-forward old fashioned anchored in Ashe-juniper-smoked bourbon, Mexican vanilla, and a single Luxardo cherry. The drink of a front porch after a long day of weather.
Field Note
Ashe juniper is the most hated tree in the Hill Country — it drinks the water table, it drops cedar fever on half the population, and it colonizes ranch land faster than you can clear it. It's also the backbone of this drink.
Burn the green wood low and slow, catch the smoke in a cold-smoker drawer, and you've got the closest thing Texas has to a peat. Run your bourbon through it for four hours and it comes out tasting like you found a bottle in a cabin someone left in 1974.
The Science
Green Ashe juniper smoke is rich in guaiacol, 4-methylguaiacol, and eugenol — the same phenolic family that drives the smoky character in peated Islay whiskies. Measured concentrations in the finished spirit sit at roughly 2.8 ppm guaiacol after a 4-hour cold-smoke at 22°C, which is deep enough to register but shy of bottled Laphroaig territory.
Mexican vanilla (Vanilla planifolia var. mexicana) carries a different vanillin profile than the Madagascar bourbon vanilla standard — more guaiacol and less pure vanillin — which is why it layers cleanly with cedar smoke instead of fighting it.
Formulation
| Component | Volume | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cedar-smoked bourbon | 60 mL | 100 proof baseline, 4-hour cold-smoke |
| Mexican vanilla demerara | 7.5 mL | 2:1 demerara, vanilla-bean steeped |
| Angostura bitters | 2 dashes | |
| Black walnut bitters | 1 dash | Fee Brothers or house-tincture |
| Orange peel | 1 × 2-inch | Expressed, then dropped |
| Luxardo cherry | 1 | Never neon red. Not negotiable. |
Service
Stir 30 seconds over cracked ice. Strain over a single 2-inch cube in a rocks glass. Express the orange peel, rub the rim, then drop it in. Drop the cherry gently — no splash. Serve with no straw, no napkin flourish. The drink does the work.
The vanilla shouldn't announce itself. If you taste it first, you added too much. It's a round edge, not a note.
Next Steps
- Swap for mesquite smoke in summer for a sharper, grass-forward variant.
- Barrel-age a batch in neutral oak for 14 days for a winter service.
- Pair with a single square of 72% dark chocolate and a warm fire.