Old Forester's 13 Festive Fashioneds are serving you up fresh Old Fashioned recipes all around town. This one's coming from Sparrow + Wolf.
Suspicious Minds at Sparrow and Wolf
Old Forester's 13 Festive Fashioneds
Recipe:
• 1 ½ ounce Old Forester 86 Bourbon
• ¾ ounce Winter Citrus Oleo Saccharum
• ¼ ounce Guajillo Infused Maple Syrup
• 2 dashes Nut Bitters
• Clipped bamboo cone with House Candied Walnuts for garnish
Add all ingredients to mixing glass, stir and strain into rocks glass with large cube. Use mini clothespin to clip bamboo cone to side of glass. Add candied walnuts to cone.
From the bartender, Alyssa Ocampo
Alyssa Ocampo (Sabin Orr / Courtesy)
My name is Alyssa Ocampo and I am the manager and Bar Manager at Sparrow + Wolf. I grew up in the outskirts of Los Angeles in Claremont, California. I moved to San Francisco when I was 17 after high school. I started my degree in Kinesiology, the study of how the body moves, in hopes to become an athletic trainer. This quickly changes after being accepted to an internship with the Disney College Program. I took a semester off my sophomore year in college and moved back south to Anaheim, California to work for the mouse himself. Realizing there that I wanted to work with people, I went back to San Francisco and changed my major to Hospitality, with an emphasis in Tourism.
I found myself in my first restaurant job to help pay for the extra courses and fell in love with the environment. I started off as a cashier, freshly 21 years-old, at a new brewery opening up San Francisco. Two weeks into my training, they asked if I wanted to try bar backing behind their two-story cocktail bar. Having zero experience, I jumped at the opportunity; and continued to have some of the most memorable experiences of my career thus far. There, I swiftly moved my way up, managing after the first year, and finally bartending the year after that.
After my time in San Francisco, I made my way back to Los Angeles, bartending as well as being the bar administrator for three other locations. LA felt too big for me after living in such a compact city, so in January of 2018, I made my way to Las Vegas—the mecca of the hospitality industry. I found Sparrow + Wolf a few months after arriving and have been here ever since.
Sparrow + Wolf has given me an abundance of tools to be successful and I am beyond grateful to be here to grow as well as help them evolve.
As far as the “Suspicious Minds” cocktail, I always try to make cocktails in an approachable way. This cocktail is my version of an Old Fashioned, with some elevated flavors. Sparrow + Wolf has always taken pride in trying to be sustainable, and have a little to zero-waste bar. The oleo saccharum in this cocktail is made using leftover peels from the citrus we prep for service. Whatever we don't use, we mix with sugar and let sit overnight to extract the oils. We then cook this mixture with water to create a citrus oil syrup, giving this cocktail a balanced mix of citrus and sweet. We add a touch of guajillo maple syrup to balance the sweetness, and nut bitters to round the whole drink out. Lastly, we garnish with candied walnuts to elevate the taste buds even more.
If you can’t make it to Sparrow + Wolf, visit any of the below retailers to pick up a bottle of Old Forester to try out the recipe at home!
Lee's | Liquor World | Liquor Lineup | Liquor Outlet | Khoury's