Seelbach
ClassicBourbon and champagne, drenched in bitters. A grand-hotel showpiece.
Complex and aromatic, with bourbon and orange liqueur underpinning champagne's dry sparkle. The enormous bitters load is the signature — a spiced, faintly medicinal depth that somehow reads as balanced rather than overwhelming.
Ingredients
- 1 oz Bourbon
- 0.5 oz Orange Liqueur
- 7 dashes Angostura Bitters
- 7 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
- 4 oz Champagne
- Orange peel · optional garnish
Method
- 1
Add the bourbon, orange liqueur, and both bitters to a mixing glass with ice.
- 2
Stir until well chilled.
- 3
Strain into a chilled champagne flute.
- 4
Top with champagne and express an orange peel over the surface.
The Story
The Seelbach was presented as a rediscovered pre-Prohibition relic of Louisville's Seelbach Hotel, "revived" by bar director Adam Seger in the 1990s — until Seger admitted in 2016 that he had invented it himself. Fabricated history aside, the drink is genuinely good and genuinely unusual, calling for a startling fourteen total dashes of bitters. It has kept its place in the canon on merit, if not on honesty.
Recipe card
The whole recipe in one shareable image.
