New takes on the Old Fashioned: Competition puts focus on the classic cocktail

Koh Yung Shen from Backdoor Bodega was declared the winner thanks to a drink called Winter Woodford-land. — Photo: Handout

How would you take a classic cocktail like the Old Fashioned and elevate it to make it your own?

That was the task set to participants of the recent “The Wonderful Race” competition by Woodford Reserve, which held its final round recently at Jann Kuala Lumpur.

Eight bartenders from KL, Ipoh and Penang competed for the grand prize of an all-expenses-paid trip to the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Versailles in the United States. The final four had 15 minutes to come up with a unique Old Fashioned using a randomly chosen blind ingredient

In the end, Koh Yung Shen from Backdoor Bodega was declared the winner thanks to a drink called Winter Woodford-land, which combined Woodford Reserve bourbon and his blind ingredient, wintermelon sugar.

The final four of the competition (from left) Jason Yee (Ikiya 2.0), Koh Yung Shen (Backdoor Bodega), Darwin Ng (Jann), and Kelvin Wong (Good Friends Club Penang).

The most interesting thing about this competition was the focus on a famous classic like the Old Fashioned, and how the competitors had to stay within the scope of that drink.

The Old Fashioned is such a quintessential classic cocktail that it can be easy to make but hard to innovate, so all credit to the final four bartenders – Koh, Darwin Ng (Jann), Kelvin Wong (Good Friends Club Penang), and Jason Yee (Ikiya 2.0) – for coming up with such creative drinks during the blind ingredient task.

Last but not least, I also liked the fact that more than half of the top 8 were bartenders from Ipoh and Penang, which really bodes well for the cocktail scene in those cities. Here's hoping there'll be more interesting competitions like this in the future!