Meet the Winner of Elijah Craig’s New Era of the Old Fashioned Cocktail Contest

For the third year in a row, Elijah Craig’s “New Era of the Old Fashioned Cocktail Contest,” hosted by Elijah Craig and VinePair, challenged bartenders from around the country to create their own personal riff on the timeless classic cocktail. It’s no easy feat to innovate on the simple ingredients — a mastered balance of bourbon, bitters, sugar, and water — and come out on the other side with a drink that can stand apart from the original.

In order to win, entrants would have to channel a bit of Elijah Craig himself, a pioneer distiller in the bourbon world who was the first to age the spirit in charred oak barrels and who began practicing small- batch production methods before there was even a name for it.

The rules were simple: Entries should be unique, contain no more than 2.5 ounces of alcoholic ingredients (all 40% ABV or less), be no more than 6 ounces total in the glass, and the cocktail must contain at least 1 ounce of Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon or Elijah Craig Straight Rye Whiskey. Recipes, instructions, and photos of the finished cocktails were sent in, along with a story behind the bartender’s journey and the inspiration behind the cocktail.

The first 10 semi-finalists were then asked for video submissions to provide backstory on themselves and the cocktails, as well as demonstrate their brand knowledge of Elijah Craig. They also demoed how to make the drinks.

From there, five finalists were selected to bring the contest full circle by competing live in front of the judging panel. This year’s grand prize is a feature in Elijah Craig’s Old Fashioned Week Cocktail Companion: Volume 3 and $15,000.

This year’s judges included Adam Teeter, CEO and co-founder of VinePair; Jeffrey Morgenthaler, an award-winning bartender and author of “The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique;” and Lynn House, Heaven Hill Brand’s National Spirits Specialist and Portfolio Mixologist. Cocktails were evaluated based on the innovation and creativity of the recipe, the cocktail name, the story behind the drink, presentation and appearance, and the overall balance, flavor, aroma, and character of the cocktail.

This year’s winner, the Orchard Ease created by Aaron Tran, hit all the marks.

Tran learned about the 2025 contest through Instagram when the VinePair account had posted about the opportunity. But it wasn’t the first time he’d heard about the “New Era of the Old Fashioned Cocktail Contest” — he had entered the competition in 2024. However, that year he unfortunately did not advance in the contest.

Thankfully, Tran believes in second chances — and himself.

At first, he debated tweaking his entry from last year — a split-based Old Fashioned using both Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon and Elijah Craig Straight Rye Whiskey that swapped out the Angostura bitters for chocolate mole bitters. But after mixing it up again he realized, although the drink was good, he felt it strayed too far from the classic guardrails of what makes an Old Fashioned.

Next, he turned to a cocktail he had once created using a homemade apple cider syrup. Could the syrup work within the Old Fashioned format, he wondered? It was delicious, but he knew he could make it better.

Finally, after a few more iterations, he landed on his winning cocktail recipe for the Orchard Ease — his go-to Old Fashioned recipe, upgraded to use Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon and his own homemade cordial — a new expression of the timeless cocktail that also represented his own personal story.

Aaron Tran

“I wanted to connect it back to my background in pastry because that was my first job in restaurants,” he says, explaining that he got the idea for his cordial from a technique he learned while making apple pie caramel candies. He remembered cooking down apple cider before adding in cream, butter, sugar, and cinnamon. “I was like, ‘How do I turn this into a cocktail?’

“So I found a cinnamon syrup recipe that I really liked, and I combined the reduced apple cider with the cinnamon syrup and used that as a base for my cordial,” he says. He added a half-ounce into the glass, stirred, and took a sip. The result was a perfectly balanced, not-too-sweet cocktail that tasted just like apple pie.

“It sounds sweeter than it really is,” Tran says, explaining how the complex flavors of tartaric acid are left after the apple cider is reduced. The sherry in his cinnamon sherry syrup, which is combined with the reduced apple cider to make the finished apple cider cordial, also contributes to the final flavor profile. “So, it actually balances against the sugar in the drink, and is just really well rounded,” he says.

Elijah Craig’s Small Batch Bourbon is the only bourbon truly up for the job, he says. “It’s not too oaky and the proof-point is perfect because if it were lower, say like 40% alcohol, the other flavors in the drink would really overpower the bourbon.” He thinks a bourbon with a higher ABV than Elijah Craig’s 47% would wash out the added apple flavor and nuances of the cinnamon sherry syrup.

The concoction took Tran to the finals in Kentucky. Unfortunately, a historic blizzard caused his flight from NYC to Kentucky to be delayed and then canceled. But never one to give up easily, he was able to catch the first flight out of New Jersey on Wednesday, competition day. Although he missed the first two days of the trip, including a tour of the Elijah Craig Distillery, he was relieved he even made it at all. He says he arrived “feet-on-the-ground” just one hour before he and four other finalists were to take the stage to present their cocktails, live and in front of the judges.

He says he was oddly calm before taking the stage, but as soon as he stepped behind the bar in front of the judges, the nerves hit. Tran immediately launched into the story behind his cocktail, forgetting about the small pie crust and apple gel he had brought with him from New York as an amuse bouche for the judges. Turns out, he didn’t need it.

The story connected his cocktail ingredients to his career in restaurants, using the process of boiling out the water from apple cider as an analogy for his experience in several different positions, from a pastry chef to front of house to serving and expo to behind the bar. Just like his cocktail ingredients in the winning drink, Tran is a culmination of the most important elements from these experiences. He also noted how each cocktail he serves is like the sherry in the cinnamon sherry syrup: containing years of knowledge in a single serving.

Tran finished by explaining how it all came together beautifully for the final recipe. “Elijah Craig is just the perfect bourbon for my cocktail,” he said, explaining how Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon functioned as the anchoring backdrop of the drink, and that the bourbon’s warm space and subtle smoke flavor profile was key to striking the perfect balance with his homemade apple cider cordial for the winning Orchard Ease cocktail.

This article is sponsored by Elijah Craig.

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