As the days grow colder and shorter, autumn is the perfect season to enjoy one of the all-time classics, the Jack Rose. The drink is made with the quintessential fall crop, the good old apple. Indeed, long before Americans were making corn into bourbon, farmers in the Thirteen Colonies were making applejack, the principal component of this drink.
And while I’m raising a glass to the autumnal equinox, I’ll also be rereading Ernest Hemingway’s classic Lost Generation novel, The Sun Also Rises. Not only was the book published in the fall of 1926 but features the Jack Rose.
The Jack Rose is a pre-Prohibition gem, a classic three-part “sour” cocktail made with apple brandy/applejack, lemon or lime juice and grenadine. In his 1948 book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury deemed the Jack Rose to be one of the “Six Basic Cocktails,” along with the Martini, Manhattan, Sidecar, Daiquiri (another sour), and the Old Fashioned. Pretty esteemed company.