Port Old Fashioned
A Port Old Fashioned is 45ml of bourbon, 22.5ml of ten-year tawny port, 5ml of demerara syrup and one dash each of Angostura and orange bitters. Stir over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strain over one large cube under an orange twist. About 2.3 UK units. Port is wine, so the drink contains sulphites. It is an Old Fashioned with a split base. The port sweetens, thickens and adds walnut and dried fig, which is why the syrup is cut to almost nothing. Tawny matters. It spends years in cask with air reaching it, which turns the fruit nutty and dry at the edges, and that sits with the vanilla and oak of the bourbon. Ruby is bottled young and stays bright and jammy, and beside whiskey it tastes like squash. No creator is recorded, and bars make the drink several ways. These measures are ours.
Glassware: Rocks Glass
Garnish: Orange twist
Ingredients
45ml
At 40% ABV or a little stronger, cut to 45ml to leave room for the wine. A bourbon with rye in the mash bill keeps a spine under the dried fruit; a wheated one goes soft.
22.5ml
A ten-year tawny at about 20% ABV, our working figure within the 19 to 22% the IVDP gives for port. Years in cask give a bouquet of dried fruits and wood, by the IVDP’s account. Port is wine and contains sulphites. We keep it a month or two once open, stoppered and cool.
5ml
Only 5ml, because the port brings sugar of its own. Demerara’s toffee edge suits the fig better than white sugar does.
1 dash
One dash, at 44.7% ABV, for clove and cinnamon to meet the bourbon. Two dashes push the port into the background.
1 dash
One dash, for orange to lift the dried fruit. Without it the drink runs heavy and brown.
Instructions
Add the bourbon, tawny port, demerara syrup and both bitters to a mixing glass.
Fill with cubed ice and stir for 20 to 30 seconds.
Place one large cube in a rocks glass.
Strain over the cube.
Express an orange twist over the surface and drop it in.
Our version
There is no fixed recipe for a port Old Fashioned. Ours splits the base two to one, 45ml of bourbon to 22.5ml of ten-year tawny, cuts the demerara syrup to 5ml because the port is sweet, and uses a dash each of Angostura and orange bitters.
Source: our own specification. Last checked 10 October 2026.
Expert Tip
Tawny, not ruby, and a ten-year is the one to aim for. Younger tawnies are thinner; a twenty-year is wasted here, because the syrup and bitters cover the detail you paid for. Stir for 20 to 30 seconds and no longer. Port lowers the strength of the mix, so there is less alcohol to carry the meltwater, and a long stir leaves the drink thin. Write the date on the port when you open it. We keep a tawny a month or two with the stopper in, somewhere cool. After that it flattens and tastes faintly cooked, and the drink goes dull for no reason you can taste at first.
Behind the Port Old Fashioned
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
We found no creator credited with this drink in any source we read. Port Old Fashioneds are made in enough different ways that no single recipe owns the name: bourbon-led splits like this one, versions built almost entirely on port, and maple-sweetened ones.
The idea is older than the name. Fortified wine has gone into whiskey drinks for as long as both have existed, and the Old Fashioned takes a second ingredient well. Ours is a bourbon-led split with its own measures.
Why Tawny Port Works Here
The IVDP describes ruby style port as restraining the evolution of its colour and keeping the fruit and strength of a young wine, and tawny style as aged in cask or vat, with a bouquet of dried fruits and wood. In the glass that means bright, jammy grape from a ruby, and walnut, dried fig and caramel from a tawny, closer to an old sherry than to fresh wine.
Bourbon has spent its own years in new oak and picked up vanilla, caramel and a little nuttiness. Tawny shares that vocabulary, so the drink reads as one thing. Ruby’s fruit belongs to a different drink, and the join shows.
The Split Base
Forty-five millilitres of bourbon against 22.5 of port is a split base rather than an Old Fashioned with a modifier. The second ingredient is large enough to change what the drink is.
The port does three jobs at once. It sweetens, which is why the syrup drops to almost nothing. It thickens the texture, as a fortified wine does. And it brings fruit the bourbon cannot supply. Take it out and you have a thin, under-sweetened whiskey drink rather than a lighter version of this one.
Sweetening and Bitters
Five millilitres of demerara syrup corrects rather than sweetens. Tawny carries real sugar, and a full Old Fashioned measure of syrup on top of it would make a dessert wine. Demerara’s toffee edge sits with the fig and caramel already in the glass.
Two bitters rather than one, and the split is deliberate. Angostura’s clove and cinnamon reach for the bourbon; orange bitters reach for the port’s dried fruit. Angostura alone leaves the drink heavy and brown, and orange alone leaves it pretty and loose. One dash of each joins them.
Three Old Fashioneds
The Port Old Fashioned beside our Old Fashioned and Maple Old Fashioned; all three are our own recipes, with bourbon at our working figure of 40% and port at 20%
Port Old Fashioned
- Whiskey
- 45ml bourbon
- Sweetener
- 22.5ml tawny port, 5ml demerara syrup
- Bitters
- A dash each of Angostura and orange
- UK units
- About 2.3
Old Fashioned
- Whiskey
- 45ml bourbon or rye
- Sweetener
- One sugar cube
- Bitters
- Two dashes Angostura
- UK units
- About 1.9
Maple Old Fashioned
- Whiskey
- 60ml bourbon
- Sweetener
- 10ml maple syrup
- Bitters
- Two dashes Angostura
- UK units
- About 2.5
| Drink | Whiskey | Sweetener | Bitters | UK units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Port Old Fashioned | 45ml bourbon | 22.5ml tawny port, 5ml demerara syrup | A dash each of Angostura and orange | About 2.3 |
| Old Fashioned | 45ml bourbon or rye | One sugar cube | Two dashes Angostura | About 1.9 |
| Maple Old Fashioned | 60ml bourbon | 10ml maple syrup | Two dashes Angostura | About 2.5 |
Serving It
One large cube in a rocks glass, after dinner. A single cube melts slowly; cubed ice keeps diluting, and by the last third the drink is cold fig water.
Twist the orange over the surface first, then drop it in. Its oil lifts a dark, heavy glass.
For the original, make an Old Fashioned; for maple in the same frame, a Maple Old Fashioned.
Make it at home
The Spirit
Whiskey (Bourbon)Under the US standard 27 CFR 5.143, bourbon is an American whiskey whose mash is at least 51% corn, matured in fresh charred oak barrels and bottled at 40% ABV or higher, the figure our recipes use. The fresh charred wood gives it its vanilla, caramel and colour, and the corn gives a rounder, sweeter spirit than rye. It is the base of 26 of our recipes, more than any other whiskey.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Port Old Fashioned?
Why tawny port rather than ruby?
Which bourbon should I use?
How long does open port keep?
Does a Port Old Fashioned contain sulphites?
Who created the Port Old Fashioned?
How strong is a Port Old Fashioned?
Sources.
Correct as of 18 October 2026.
- IVDP (Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto), “Port wines: introduction” (usually 19 to 22% vol.; ruby style keeps the fruit and strength of a young wine; tawny style aged in cask or vat, a bouquet of dried fruits and wood).
- legislation.gov.uk, “Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II (as retained in UK law)” (item 12: sulphur dioxide and sulphites at more than 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/litre).
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Maple Old Fashioned
A Maple Old Fashioned is 60ml of bourbon, 10ml of dark maple syrup and two dashes of Angostura bitters, stirred with ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained over one large cube in a rocks glass, with an expressed orange twist. About 2.5 UK units. It is the Old Fashioned with maple syrup in place of the sugar cube, and the bitters and orange kept as they are. We found no creator named for it, and no source we read dates its first appearance. Maple is sweeter by volume than one-to-one sugar syrup, so 10ml is enough against 60ml of bourbon. The darker grades carry a toasted, caramel side that meets the vanilla and oak in the whiskey; pancake syrup, mostly flavoured sugar syrup, does not.
Widow’s Kiss
A Widow’s Kiss is 45ml of calvados, 22.5ml of yellow Chartreuse, 22.5ml of Bénédictine and two dashes of Angostura, stirred over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe, with a cherry. About 3.7 UK units, which is more than it tastes. It appears in George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks of 1895, in the Internet Archive’s scan: one pony of apple brandy, half a pony each of yellow Chartreuse and Bénédictine and two dashes of Angostura, shaken and strained into a fancy cocktail glass. Our measures keep his two, one, one; we stir it and add a cherry. The calvados brings apple and a spirit backbone, the Bénédictine honey and spice, the yellow Chartreuse saffron and herbs. The bitters are the only dry note in the glass, and they keep two liqueurs from settling into syrup.
Old Fashioned
The IBA’s Old Fashioned is 45ml of bourbon or rye whiskey, one sugar cube, a few dashes of Angostura bitters and a few dashes of water; we use bourbon and two dashes. The sugar and bitters are muddled in a rocks glass until the cube dissolves, then ice goes in, the bourbon goes over it and the drink is stirred for 15 to 20 seconds. Orange peel is expressed over the top. About 1.9 UK units. Only the sugar and bitters are muddled: no orange flesh, no cherry. The recipe predates the name. The Oxford Companion says that when a newspaper in Hudson, New York, defined the cocktail in 1806, it described “spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters”. The name came later in the century: the Companion has people ordering Old-Fashioneds in Chicago in 1880, as bartenders added liqueurs to the format and drinkers who wanted it plain asked for one made the old-fashioned way.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits · Updated 18 October 2026