The Best Whiskey Sour Cocktail Recipe According to Experts

In New York’s East Village there is a restaurant whose cocktail menu assigns each drink to an illustrated wooden chair. The Manhattan is a stark, severe chair with a slatted back; the Aperol Spritz, a much more attractive rounded version. The Whiskey Sour, meanwhile, is paired with a classic spindle-backed dining chair, the kind that completes dining sets in countless American homes: practical, timeless, reliable. It’s a fitting match for a drink that is, some say, the most unwavering sour in the canon.

“It’s one of the safest sour beers you can order,” Punch editor-in-chief Talia Baiocchi said in a recent interview. blind tasting of Whiskey Sours, noting that unlike a Daiquiri, the drink’s base liquor spans a relatively narrow spectrum of flavors. Any variation largely comes down to the strength of the whiskey and whether the whiskey in question is bourbon or rye. In fact, in the seven years since Latest Whiskey Sours tasted blindIt seems the drink has become even more predictable. Whereas in 2017 nearly half of the submitted recipes had rye as a base, and roughly the same proportion were served on the rocks and without egg white, this time around only two of the nine recipes included rye (one in a split bourbon base), and all but one were served neat and with egg white (the one not in the group used aquafaba). Overall, this was in line with what the judges were looking for: a sparkling drink, served with a balance of sweet and bitter, and a whiskey that could pack a punch.

The drink’s newfound homogeneity was reinforced by the near-universal choice of garnish: a decorative dash of Angostura (or, in one case, Peychaud’s) bitters on top of the foam. None of the assembled judges—bartenders Patty Dennison and Paige Walwyn and Punch’s Baiocchi, Mary Anne Porto and me—could pinpoint when that change occurred. None, however, had any qualms with the decision, noting that it was a logical choice to mitigate potentially off-putting aromas from egg white or aquafaba.

Against all odds, the two favorite recipes, both equally favored by the judges, were the only ones that included rye. One was the Dan Sabo Whisky SourThe recipe for this Rittenhouse Rye also took top honors at our 2017 tasting. Its specification calls for two ounces of Rittenhouse rye, one ounce of lemon juice, a half-ounce each of orange juice and simple syrup, and one egg white, served over ice with a half orange slice and a brandied cherry on the side. Though the judges didn’t find the presentation archetypal, no one was upset that the drink arrived on the rocks. Perhaps due to the unorthodox addition of orange juice, one taster described this example as “very fresh” and another as particularly “juicy.”

The other favorite was Whiskey Sour by Alicia PerryPerry’s recipe splits the base between one ounce of Elijah Craig Small Batch bourbon and one ounce of Rittenhouse rye whiskey, combined with three-quarters of an ounce each of lemon juice and cane sugar simple syrup, plus one egg white, served in a snifter with Angostura bitters splashed over the foam. Visually, it fell in line with most of the drinks we tried, but stood out as the most aromatically compelling; Perry’s calls for a lemon wedge to be expressed over the surface of the drink in addition to the bitters. Described as “elegant” and “thoughtful” by the judges, Perry’s highly considered specification led one taster to declare, “I want two of those.”