When it comes to what to drink on Thanksgiving, most people get all bent up about what wine to drink. And, to be sure, that's a tough question. But I submit that it's much easier to answer if you have a couple of cocktails in you -- good old American cocktails for an all-American holiday.

The cocktail I like to drink on Thanksgiving is the Old Fashioned. There's nothing quite so elemental, simple to make and nuanced for a holiday that celebrates American deliciousness. It's got a satisfying history too, tracing its roots right back to the origin of the word cocktail and the uniquely American family of drinks. The origin of the word cocktail is disputed, but no one argues that it came into usage in the early 19th century and came to be defined as a drink containing just four ingredients: spirit, bitters, sugar and water. In the coming decades, things would get fancier, as Sours, Collinses, Daisies, etc., became commonplace. But many drinkers rejected these new froufrou concoctions and just wanted the basic, simple drinks of yore. Hence the Old Fashioned, which today suggests a simple drink of American whiskey (bourbon or rye), bitters, water and sugar

And the cocktail is as delicious today as it would have been 150 years ago. What makes it so great? The bitters bring out the spicy complexity of the bourbon or rye. The sugar softens the blow of the whiskey and the water helps to open it up. It's a lovely way to enjoy whiskey, especial if you add some ice and less water. As the ice melts, the cocktail just softens and opens up for you, like a flower greeting the sun on a cool morning. There's one final ingredient that I consider essential: the lemon twist. A properly squeezed twist of lemon adds a pure, refreshing dusting of citrus brightness that brings the whole cocktail to life. Some people prefer an orange twist, but I find it too soft. (Note: There was also a shameful history from the '70s of making Old Fashioneds with maraschino cherries, orange slices and a topping of soda water. Few more horrible transformations have ever been leveled on a perfectly great drink.)

At home, I keep a bottle of homemade gum arabic simple syrup (dissolve 3 cups of sugar in 1½ cups of water, bring to a simmer and dissolve 2 tablespoons of gum arabic for a viscous, silky syrup) and use this instead of granular sugar. But this recipe is for the classic, easy-to-make version that uses regular sugar. It requires no tools, no cleanup.

A couple of these before your Thanksgiving dinner are a perfect warm-up. And, what you might find, as I often have, is that once the taste of an Old Fashioned is in your mouth, you won't want to switch to wine at dinner. In fact, this cocktail works beautifully with turkey, gravy, stuffing and sweet potatoes.

Classic Old Fashioned

Ingredients

Directions

1. Drop the sugar in the bottom of a highball glass. Douse it with the bitters. Add the water and stir briskly until the sugar is dissolved or almost completely dissolved. Add the whiskey on top of that. Stir a little. Now drop on the ice and squeeze the lemon twist.

Jordan Mackay is the wine and spirits editor for San Francisco's metropolitan magazine 7x7 and writes The Juice column for Chow. In addition, he's a contributing writer for Wine and Spirits magazine and a regular contributor to Decanter and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Photo credit: Anders Eriksson / iStockphoto.com

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