Wisconsin Old Fashioned Recipe (Sweet, Sour or Press)

A Wisconsin old fashioned swaps the bourbon in a classic old fashioned for brandy, muddles in a maraschino cherry and orange slice instead of just garnishing with them, and tops the drink with soda so you can order it sweet, sour, or press. It’s the unofficial state cocktail of Wisconsin, and once you’ve had one at a supper club, the whiskey version starts to feel a little plain.

If you’ve never had one, the order of operations can feel backward. You’re not sipping a spirit-forward drink with a whisper of sweetness. You’re drinking something closer to a boozy, bubbly punch, built to sit alongside a Friday night fish fry or a plate of cheese curds. That’s the point. This isn’t a sipping cocktail for quiet reflection. It’s a social drink, meant to be ordered loudly and refilled at least once.

What makes a Wisconsin Old Fashioned Recipe different?

A Wisconsin old fashioned uses brandy instead of whiskey, muddles the orange slice and cherry right into the drink instead of using them as a garnish only, and finishes with a splash of soda. You order it “sweet” for lemon-lime soda, “sour” for a grapefruit soda or sour mix, or “press” for a half-and-half mix of club soda and lemon-lime soda. Everything else about the build, sugar and bitters as the base, follows the same logic as a traditional Old Fashioned.

What you’ll need

This recipe makes one drink, but it scales easily if you’re mixing a round for the table.

• 1 sugar cube (or ½ to 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, or ½ ounce simple syrup)
• 4 to 6 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1 orange slice, cut into a half-moon
• 1 to 2 maraschino cherries, plus a splash of the cherry juice
• 2 ounces brandy (Korbel is the Wisconsin standard)
• Ice
• Soda of choice: lemon-lime soda for sweet, grapefruit soda or sour mix for sour, or half club soda and half lemon-lime soda for press

Korbel isn’t just a suggestion here. Wisconsin buys more than half of all the Korbel brandy sold in the entire country, and that loyalty is baked into how the drink tastes. A different brandy will still make a good old fashioned, but if you want the exact flavor people associate with a Wisconsin supper club, Korbel is worth tracking down.

How to make a Wisconsin old fashioned Recipe

Muddle the base. Drop the sugar cube into a rocks glass and dash the bitters directly over it. The sugar will start to dissolve almost immediately. Add the orange slice and cherry, then muddle everything together until the fruit breaks down and the sugar has mostly dissolved. You’re not trying to pulverize it into pulp, just enough pressure to release the juice and oils.

Add the brandy and ice. Pour in your 2 ounces of brandy and stir briefly to combine it with the muddled fruit and sugar at the bottom of the glass. Fill the rest of the glass with ice, packing it in fairly tight since this drink is meant to stay cold through a long conversation.

Top with your soda of choice. This is the step that actually defines the drink. Lemon-lime soda makes it sweet, grapefruit soda or sour mix makes it sour, and a half-and-half pour of club soda and lemon-lime soda makes it a press. Give it one gentle stir so the soda doesn’t go flat.

Garnish and serve. Skewer another cherry and a small orange wedge on a pick and rest it across the top of the glass. Serve with a short straw, if you like one, and let the ice do its job of slowly diluting the drink as you go.

Sweet, sour, or press: how to actually order one

Walk into a supper club in Milwaukee, Green Bay, or anywhere along Highway 41, and the bartender will ask “brandy or whiskey” and then “sweet, sour, or press.” Here’s what each one means.

Sweet is finished with a lemon-lime soda like Sprite or 7UP. It’s the most popular order and the closest thing to a default if you don’t have a preference yet.

Sour is topped with a grapefruit soda like Squirt, or sometimes a bottled sour mix. It trades some of the sweetness for a sharper, more citrus-forward finish, and it tends to be the pick for people who find the sweet version a little much.

Press splits the difference with half club soda and half lemon-lime soda. You still get carbonation and a touch of sweetness, but it’s drier overall and lets the brandy and bitters come through more clearly. If you like the idea of the drink but don’t want it to taste like dessert, order it press.

None of these are wrong. Locals genuinely split into camps over this, and part of the fun of the drink is figuring out which version fits your taste.

Why brandy instead of whiskey?

This is the question every out-of-towner asks, and the popular answer isn’t quite the real one. For years, bartenders traced brandy’s popularity back to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where the story goes that Korbel handed out samples that won over visiting Wisconsinites. It’s a nice story, but historian Jeanette Hurt, author of Wisconsin Cocktails, dug through more than two centuries of newspaper archives and found it doesn’t hold up. Korbel wasn’t even making brandy again after Prohibition until decades later.

The real reason traces back to World War II. Whiskey and bourbon producers voluntarily halted much of their production so grain could be shipped overseas to feed people during the war, which left a lot of low-quality, rough spirits on shelves back home. Around the same time, Wisconsin liquor distributors got their hands on roughly 30,000 cases of good brandy. Faced with a choice between rotgut whiskey and quality brandy, Wisconsinites chose the brandy, and the habit never really went away. Brandy makers noticed the demand and leaned into marketing directly to the state, which only deepened the loyalty.

The drink’s status is now official. In November 2023, the Wisconsin State Legislature passed a bipartisan resolution naming the brandy old fashioned the state cocktail, cementing something that had been true in practice for decades.

Garnish like a local

Cherries and an orange slice are the default, but Wisconsin supper clubs are known for offering options beyond the standard fruit. Green olives are a common substitute if you want something savory instead of sweet. Pickled mushrooms show up at better-stocked bars, and pickled Brussels sprouts have become a genuine trend over the last several years. If you’re making these at home for a group, setting out a small garnish bar with cherries, olive, and a jar of pickled vegetables lets everyone customize their own glass.

Making a batch for a crowd

If you’re hosting and don’t want to muddle drinks one at a time all night, you can build the base in bulk. Multiply the sugar, bitters, orange slices, and cherries by however many guests you’re serving, and muddle them together in a large pitcher or punch bowl. Stir in the brandy, but hold off on the ice and soda until you’re ready to serve, since soda goes flat fast and ice dilutes the drink the longer it sits. Set out the sweet, sour, and press sodas separately so each guest can top their own glass and stir it themselves. This keeps the carbonation intact and lets everyone order their old fashioned exactly the way they’d get it at a supper club.

One more tip if you’re serving a crowd: keep the garnish fruit fresh and cut close to serving time. Orange slices that sit out too long lose their oils, and that citrus aroma is a bigger part of the drink’s character than most people realize.

What kind of brandy is used in a Wisconsin old fashioned?
Korbel is the most widely used brandy in Wisconsin and the closest thing to a regional standard. It’s a California brandy, not a local Wisconsin product, but the state buys more of it than anywhere else in the country. Any drinkable brandy will work, though the flavor will lean slightly less fruity without Korbel specifically.

Is a Wisconsin old fashioned the same as a regular old fashioned?
Not quite. A classic old fashioned is whiskey, sugar, and bitters, usually stirred and garnished simply with an orange peel. A Wisconsin old fashioned swaps in brandy, muddles the fruit directly into the drink instead of just garnishing with it, and adds a splash of soda, which makes it noticeably sweeter, taller, and more casual.

Can I make a Wisconsin old fashioned with whiskey instead of brandy?
Yes, and plenty of people order it this way. Just ask for a “whiskey old fashioned” if you’re at a bar, since ordering a plain “old fashioned” in Wisconsin will usually get you the brandy version by default.

What’s the difference between sweet, sour, and press?
Sweet uses lemon-lime soda, sour uses a grapefruit soda or sour mix, and press uses a half-and-half combination of club soda and lemon-lime soda. Press is the driest of the three, and sweet is the most popular overall.