Type Aromatic Bitters | Producer House of Angostura | Region Trinidad and Tobago > Port of Spain | ABV 44.7% | Volume 200 ml | Price (AUD) ~$20
House notes
Angostura is the red-capped bottle with the oversized label that has been on every bar top since approximately forever. You use two or three drops per cocktail and the bottle lasts a year. Secret recipe since 1824, allegedly twenty-plus botanicals, tastes of clove, cinnamon, gentian, and a deep dry bitter that pulls every Old Fashioned and Whisky Sour together. Without Angostura your Old Fashioned is a sugared whiskey. With it, it is a cocktail. This is not an optional bottle.
What it pairs with
Old Fashioned (non-negotiable), Manhattan, Whisky Sour, Pisco Sour (the float on top), Champagne cocktail, Trinidad Sour, and genuinely hundreds of classic recipes. Not really a food pairing bottle on its own. Treat it as seasoning. A splash in a glass of cold lemonade on a hot day is a legitimate grown-up drink. A few drops in sparkling water with lime is the non-alcoholic aperitif of choice for half the sober-curious crowd.
About the producer
Angostura was invented in 1824 by a German army surgeon working in Venezuela and has been made in Trinidad since 1875. The oversized paper label famously does not fit the bottle (a nineteenth-century labelling accident that became the brand). The recipe is still known to five people.