When it comes to a timeless American whiskey cocktail like the Old Fashioned, Elijah Craig is a natural starting point. Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon’s warm spice, gentle smoke and rich sweetness were practically built for the spirit-forward template of whiskey, sugar, and bitters.
For its upcoming A New Era of the Old Fashioned Cocktail Contest finale, Elijah Craig and VinePair invited bartenders across the country to put a personal spin on the classic using either Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon or Elijah Craig Straight Rye Whiskey as the base. The rules were simple but precise: Keep the drink under 6 ounces, use no more than 2 ½ ounces of alcohol at 40 percent ABV, include at least 1 ounce of Elijah Craig, and tell a story through the glass.
After reviewing submissions from around the country, ten semi-finalists were selected and asked to present their cocktails on video. From there, five finalists earned a trip to Louisville in February 2026, where they will compete live for a $15,000 grand prize and a feature in “Elijah Craig’s Old Fashioned Week Cocktail Companion: Volume 3.”
Read on to meet the finalists and learn how they turned one of the most familiar cocktails in America into something deeply personal.
The Bartender: Briana Parra-Magaña
Cocktail: Old Fashioned Compassion
Briana Parra-Magaña didn’t set out to become a craft bartender. At first, bartending was simply a job.
That changed when she began working at Sage, a farm-to-table vegan restaurant with a cocktail program that allowed her to experiment with different ingredients. With a background in cooking and a sophisticated palate, she started translating culinary instincts into drinks.
Her competition cocktail, Old Fashioned Compassion, keeps the classic structure intact — sugar cube, bitters, and Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon. The twist is the sugar itself.
Parra-Magaña makes her own sugar cubes using ingredients sourced from different parts of the world, including cardamom, cacao, and piloncillo, an unrefined Mexican sugar. Each component was chosen for both its flavor and its place of origin.
“I wanted to make a drink that made you think,” she says. “If you’re not getting your cardamom from the Middle East, you’re not getting cardamom from anywhere. You know what I mean? If you’re not getting cacao from Mexico, you’re not getting it from anywhere.”
Her goal was to create a drink that was easy to replicate and approachable for other bartenders and home drinkers alike.
“I wanted to make everything accessible. I got everything at the farmers market right down the street to work on a Saturday morning.”
For Parra-Magaña, being a finalist is less about the competition and more about the message.
“It’s something bigger than me,” she says “People don’t realize how much of our daily lives are integrated with other people that we have never even considered… that’s really what I wanted to convey in this cocktail.”
The Bartender: Danielle O’Neal
Cocktail: The Great Santini
Danielle O’Neal’s path to bartending began while finishing a biology degree at the College of Charleston. She took a job at Sea Pines nine years ago and quickly realized that the bar offered the perfect backdrop to blend her science background, artistic instincts, and love of hospitality.
Her cocktail, The Great Santini, is named after the novel and film by Beaufort, South Carolina author Pat Conroy. O’Neal grew up in Conroy’s hometown, and the drink draws heavily from the flavors and culinary traditions of the Lowcountry.
“Elijah Craig is the father of bourbon, and I thought The Great Santini was a perfect name, because it’s a novel and film honoring the complexities of fatherhood and also the beauty of the low country.”
Inspired by Conroy’s cookbook and the chefs he befriended throughout his life, O’Neal leaned into classic Southern ingredients like peach, pecan, orange, and thyme — building layers of flavor designed to complement and highlight the bourbon rather than compete with it.
For O’Neal, the recognition from the competition feels deeply personal, especially from those who have watched her grow behind the bar for nearly a decade.
“It’s incredibly meaningful to be recognized as a finalist in the nationwide competition with such talented bartenders who share my same passion. The support from my co-workers, and especially my regulars, who have seen me evolve over the last nine years has been almost overwhelming.”
The Bartender: SC Baker
Cocktail: Phantom India
After working for an airline and spending years in hotel and travel hospitality, SC Baker transitioned fully into food and beverage in 2016.
For Baker, bartending is deeply tied to place, history, and the way traditions evolve over time. That thinking became the foundation for their Elijah Craig competition cocktail, Phantom India.
“The cocktail is about blending two seemingly unrelated cultures together in ways that feel really familiar,” Baker says. The drink draws inspiration from a 1960s documentary by French filmmaker Louis Malle that explored small, ritual-driven communities in India navigating modernization and post-colonial change.
Baker saw a parallel in bourbon.
“So we think of bourbon kind of in the same way now, in the modern drinks spaces, it very much is a legacy product… I wanted to showcase a cocktail that highlighted the tradition and the legacy, the ritual and the craft, while also showing how those legacy spirits can be modern and updated for the modern drinker.”
To express that idea, Baker chose Elijah Craig Straight Rye Whiskey as the base. The rest of the build continues that conversation between familiar and unexpected. A Kentucky damson plum and garam masala syrup adds warmth and spice. Jamun aromatic bitters — built on a classic bitters framework but incorporating Indian black plum — reinforce the theme. The drink is stirred and served over a large cube with a traditional orange expression and a smoked cinnamon stick for aroma.
“It has some really fun, comforting flavors but with a twist.”
Being selected as a finalist carries special weight for Baker, who sees themselves as representing both Kentucky and a smaller cocktail community within a state better known for its bourbon.
“It’s extremely humbling. There is so much talent I’m surrounded by every single day, and I feel really lucky to be able to represent Kentucky on this national stage,” they say.
The Bartender: Yolanda Gregg
Cocktail: “Lowcountry Gold”
Yolanda Gregg believes a cocktail should be able to stand on its own, even before the bartender explains it.
For her Elijah Craig Old Fashioned submission, she focused less on performance and more on meaning. Gregg built her drink around a deeply personal story tied to her roots in South Carolina and the generations who came before her.
“It’s a love letter to South Carolina,” she says. “It’s to the people who persevered through the trials of slavery. It’s a love letter to them. Without them, I would not be here.”
Her cocktail honors the familiar structure of Elijah Craig, sugar, and bitters but layers in a narrative that runs much deeper than the glass itself. In her drink is a benne seed, brought from Africa to the Carolinas in the 18th century, which adds nutty richness and umami flavors to the cocktail and also enhances the flavors of charred oak, vanilla, spice, and honey in the Elijah Craig. The addition of rice also helps highlight the Demerara sugar used to sweeten the drink.
For Gregg, the cocktail is a tribute to resilience and legacy. It reflects the food, flavors, and traditions of the South, but also the history and perseverance that shaped them. Being named a finalist is an honor, but for Gregg, the true accomplishment is knowing that the story carried the drink. She trusted that the meaning behind her Old Fashioned would come through, even without explanation, and that the judges would taste not just balance and flavor, but the thought and history poured into the glass.
The Bartender: Aaron Tran
Cocktail: Orchard Ease
Instead of behind the bar, Aaron Tran started his restaurant career in the pastry kitchen.
Nearly a decade ago in North Carolina, Tran worked as a pastry chef, but quickly realized he wanted to understand how every corner of a restaurant functioned. He moved from the expo line to the host stand, then to serving, and eventually found himself fascinated by the bartenders.
That curiosity turned into a cocktail bar job in Charlotte, and in 2024, he moved to New York City, where he now works at several bars and continues to refine his style.
For the Elijah Craig competition, Tran leaned heavily into his pastry background. His Old Fashioned riff is built around homemade syrups that combine two techniques: a cinnamon syrup made with Amontillado sherry and a deeply reduced apple cider syrup.
“I learned in my years of baking and pastry, if you cook a gallon of apple syrup or apple cider for an hour until all of the water is cooked out, you’re left with this kind of tart, sweet syrup. I combined that equally with the cinnamon syrup.”
The result is a sweetener that brings both bright apple acidity and warm spice to the drink without watering it down. Tran pairs that syrup with Elijah Craig bourbon, stirs it over ice, and serves it on a large rock for a streamlined, classic presentation.
For Tran, being named a finalist has been a meaningful confidence boost, especially after relocating to a new city.
“It feels crazy. I never win things, and I’m trying not to jinx myself now, but I’m super flattered and super honored,” he says. “I just came up to New York not having a lot of confidence and a low self esteem, especially when it comes to my career. So this has been a solidifying moment for me.”
This article is sponsored by Elijah Craig.
