Maple Old-Fashioned

Independence Day fell on a Friday and I made the obligation pilgrimage to David and Karen's house in Montpelier for the family gathering — the second year I have made the trip, the rest of the family having concluded a few years ago that the farmhouse is not the right place for a Fourth of July party because the road into the property is too narrow for a fireworks-watching crowd and because the porch will not hold thirty people. So Montpelier it is, and I drove up Friday afternoon, brought a quart of strawberry jam from the new batch and a case of the year's syrup, and stayed two nights, sleeping in the guest room that is officially Anna's but that becomes mine when I visit. The room has a Frost poem framed on the wall — "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," which Anna chose because it was the poem I read to her most often when she was small and the first one she memorized — and I read the poem before I went to sleep both nights, the way one reads a familiar prayer.

The Fourth itself was the standard Bergstrom Fourth — burgers and hot dogs and corn on the cob and David's pasta salad and Karen's coleslaw and an apple pie I had brought from a bakery in Burlington because I had not had time to make my own. About thirty people total — David and Karen's neighbors, friends of Teddy and Anna and James, the ones who could make it. Teddy brought Caitlin, who he has been seeing for about six months, and who I had not met before. She is a quiet competent woman in her early thirties, works in the financial office at a hospital in Burlington, and has the steady look of someone who is not easily impressed and is also not easily put off. Teddy was attentive to her in a way that is new and that David noticed too, the two of us exchanging a small look across the yard at one point, the kind of look that fathers and grandfathers exchange when a young man's relationship has crossed from casual into possibly serious. I did not say anything to Teddy about it. I did not need to. The look in his eye when Caitlin laughed at something he said was the entire announcement.

The fireworks were at the state house grounds and we walked there as a group at dusk — about a fifteen-minute walk from David's house — and stood with several hundred Vermonters on the lawn watching the show. The fireworks in Montpelier are not the spectacle of larger cities but they are good enough, and the small-state quality of the gathering — most of the legislators in the crowd, the governor making a brief appearance, the children running around with sparklers — has a particular Vermont character that I appreciate. I watched the show. I held Anna's arm on the walk back because the route involved some uneven sidewalk and the dark and my eyes are not what they used to be, and Anna held my arm without comment and did not make a thing of it, which is exactly the right way to hold an old man's arm, which Anna seemed to know intuitively, which I added to the list of things Anna knows that other people would have to learn.

Drove home Sunday afternoon through the clear July afternoon, the windows down, the dog in the passenger seat (David had been keeping him for the weekend at the farmhouse, but Frost rides in the truck on the long drives, that is his rule), the radio off, the only sound the wind and the engine and the gravel under the tires when I turned onto our road. Pulled into the driveway at four. The house was the way I had left it. The garden was the way I had left it. The rhythm picked up where it had been put down. Travel is a fine thing in small doses but the return to the home rhythm is the thing I do best.

I brought a case of syrup to David and Karen’s — the year’s batch, the same as always — and most of it went home with neighbors and friends the way it usually does. But one bottle stayed on the counter, and by Saturday evening someone had found a use for it that I thought was exactly right: a Maple Old-Fashioned, which turns out to be what a Vermont summer tastes like when you put it in a glass. I did not have one that night, but I thought about it the whole drive home, and I made one when I got back to the farmhouse Sunday at four, standing at the kitchen counter with the dog at my feet and the windows open to the July air, and it was the right note on which to close a fine weekend.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 1

Ingredients

2 oz bourbon or rye whiskey
1/2 oz pure maple syrup (medium or dark amber)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters
1 large ice cube or several standard cubes
1 strip orange peel, for garnish
1 cocktail cherry, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Combine. Add the maple syrup and both bitters to a rocks glass or mixing glass. Stir briefly to combine.
Add whiskey. Pour in the bourbon or rye. Stir well for about 20 seconds to integrate the syrup evenly with the spirit.
Ice. Place a large ice cube into a rocks glass (or transfer over ice if you mixed separately). Pour the cocktail over the ice.
Express the peel. Hold the orange peel skin-side down over the glass and give it a firm twist to express the oils over the surface of the drink. Run the peel around the rim of the glass, then drop it in or drape it over the edge.
Garnish and serve. Add a cocktail cherry if desired. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Maple Old-Fashioned — The Syrup We Brought to the Table