My friends know that if they taste a delicious bourbon cocktail and tell me the ingredients, I try to recreate it. So when I received a text that read Pear Vanilla Old Fashioned, I understood the assignment.

I was intrigued. I like pears. They are one of my favorite fruits and they are so sweet, when ripe. This was going to be easy.

Until it wasn’t. ☹

My first attempt was lazy. I knew what I should do – poach pears and strain them; but, I didn’t have the energy to do it and I wanted to try the cocktail sooner rather then later. I did the next best thing, I bought organic pear juice. Let me say if a dozen eggs are over 5 dollars, you can only imagine how expensive organic pear juice is. Nevertheless, the cost was better than my desire to poach pears. I assembled the Old Fashioned and used pear juice as my sweetener, aromatic bitters, twist of orange, etc. In a word, bleh. I was picking up a ‘tin’ taste even though the juice was in a jar. I then started tinkering with the amount of juice, the number of dashes of bitters and even the type of bitters. I couldn’t get this to taste right.

Determined. Or more like on a mission to get this right, I went to the store and bought pears. I didn’t want to poach pears to start and I spent a fortune on this darn organic juice; yet there I was at the store buying pears. Grrrr.

I poached the pears and added vanilla to give it some umpf. Waiting for the liquid to cool and then straining was a pain and my enthusiasm was waning, but I was all in. Fully committed. I assembled the cocktail as a traditional Old Fashioned. Oh, and this is important, with the subtle flavor of the pear, a lower proof bourbon is a must. A highter proof will overwhelm the drink and through the balance off. My second attempt was better. I didn’t love it but my crew did. It’s subtle and the pear flavor builds over time.

Verdict: Not my favorite cocktail but was in demand from the Brown Girls at my house.

Cheers,

~Kimberly Elise  
#2BrownGirls 
#MelaninTwist
#BlackGirlMagic