How the Honey-Infused Gold Rush Cocktail Became a Modern Classic

Hospitality industry lifer T.J. Siegal keeps a fairly low profile. He stays off social media, meaning you won’t find photos of him floating around the internet. But every so often, he’ll sit down in a bar somewhere in New York City, where someone will inevitably recognize him and deposit a honey-colored cocktail before him.

Said drink, the Gold Rush, is Siegal’s own creation: a simple variation on the whiskey sour that uses honey syrup instead of simple syrup. He came up with it in 2000 while hanging out at childhood friend Sasha Petraske’s bar Milk & Honey, which has since closed. Now poured and beloved in joints the world over, the Gold Rush remains Siegal’s pièce de résistance through 29 years of working in Big Apple bars and restaurants.

“I’ve made hundreds of drinks,” says Siegal, now maître d’ and beverage director at Osteria Carlina in the West Village. “I’ve run beverage programs for—how many places? It must be eight or nine. I don’t know if any of us anticipated that the Gold Rush was going to work the way it did. But it did.”

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This dead-simple cocktail is juicy and lush, comprising bourbon shaken with fresh lemon juice and honey. Some call it a Bee’s Knees with bourbon instead of gin. Others, like Milk & Honey alum Richard Boccato, owner and operator of Dutch Kills in Long Island City, will tell you it’s “the finest expression of a whiskey sour,” and the essential precursor to the Penicillin (which is made with Scotch). Its timeless elegance owes largely to the three-to-one honey syrup that Milk & Honey perfected around that time, which helps the drink achieve its silky texture, Boccato says.

“It also strikes the right balance between the sweet and sour aspects,” he adds.

A Happy Accident

The Gold Rush was born of a whim, when a then-25-year-old Siegal stopped by Milk & Honey after work for his usual bourbon sour. At the months-old bar—which quickly cemented itself as the cradle of the American craft cocktail renaissance—Petraske and company would test their way through vintage cocktail books, aiming to revive and modernize the classics. That day, they were workshopping the Honeysuckle, a daiquiri made with honey syrup.

“I asked, can I have that honey syrup instead of simple syrup in my bourbon sour?” Siegal recalls. The bourbon used was probably Knob Creek, soon replaced with 12-year Elijah Craig, which became Milk & Honey’s house bourbon.

Siegal came up with the name while sipping his very first one. “Looking at the honey by itself and looking at the drink, there’s a golden color, and you get a rush of that kind of flavor as you’re drinking it,” he says. “Then there’s the old-time sort of reference; it’s a feeling.”

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Milk & Honey never had a formal cocktail menu, but the Gold Rush quickly worked its way into the canon, as bartenders spread the gospel of this honeyed whiskey sour to anyone requesting something shaken and juicy with bourbon, recalls Siegal, who worked intermittently at Milk & Honey for a time.

“I think it fit that bill better than a lot of things available at the time,” he says. “It became the thing that came to a lot of tables and made a lot of people happy.”

Spreading the Word

Milk & Honey alumni took the Gold Rush with them when they left to open places of their own, too. Some tweaked it, as is their way; Boccato recalls one Pegu Club bartender subbing in applejack and calling it a Golden Delicious. Of course, Boccato wouldn’t dare. “T.J.’s is gospel!” Indeed, he’s featured the O.G. on the menu of every bar he’s had the agency to do so. He even has a speech ready for anyone attempting to order a standard whiskey sour at Dutch Kills, which begins thusly: The Gold Rush “is a cocktail that strikes extraordinary and inimitable balance.”

Siegal, meanwhile, went on to work at Petraske’s absinthe bar White Star and coffee bar Mercury Dime, then later for Peaches Restaurant Group, where he created a best-selling watermelon margarita variation called the Backup Dancer. He wasn’t aware the Gold Rush had become a classic until it “smacked” him in the face in 2012, when he sat down at the bar of Danny Meyer’s since-shuttered Union Square Cafe.

“They have this tiny chalkboard that says ‘classic cocktails,’ and it’s got an Old Fashioned, Manhattan, martini, sidecar and a Gold Rush,” he says. “I said, ‘Oh sh*t! That’s not a classic; it’s new!’ I certainly got a chuckle out of it.”

Interestingly, he never adopted the Gold Rush as his shift drink, preferring something no-nonsense, even anti-cocktail. (While working at Milk & Honey, he preferred rum and Coke post-shift.) He’ll genially drink the Gold Rushes sent his way, of course, but should you spot him around town and want to say thanks, his wind-down nip of choice these days is a cider and shot of Irish whiskey.

How to Make a Gold Rush Cocktail

Adapted from T.J. Siegal

Published: January 11, 2024