This quality ready made cocktail will be the hit of your next party, whether it be for just family or more!

            New Orleans, LA (Oct. 22, 2020) – In the first year that The Fifty Best wine and spirits competition has held a ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktail tasting, both of the Handy & Schiller Barreled Cocktails claimed prestigious honors.

Handy & Schiller Old Fashioned and Handy & Schiller Manhattan competed among 71 contenders for their respective titles. The Old Fashioned was awarded the Double Gold medal, and the Manhattan was awarded a Silver medal.

A panel of judges made up of wine and spirits journalists, spirits professionals, wine and spirit retailers, mixologists, spirits consultants and connoisseurs blind-tasted the RTD cocktails and rated them individually on a five-point scale. After tallying the scores, medals were awarded based on the judges’ impressions.

The Handy & Schiller Old Fashioned is made using Buffalo Trace Distillery’s flagship Buffalo Trace Bourbon and Peychaud’s Bitters and is aged in Buffalo Trace barrels. The Handy & Schiller Manhattan is made using the award-winning Sazerac Rye Whiskey, vermouth and Peychaud’s Bitters, and is aged in Sazerac Rye barrels. Both the Old Fashioned and Manhattan are barrel-aged in the warehouses at Buffalo Trace Distillery. Suggested retail pricing for each bottle is $39.99

These two barreled Cocktails are named for two people who had a great impact on the rich cocktail culture in New Orleans, Thomas Handy and John Schiller. Schiller was a New York bartender who found his way to New Orleans and by 1860, began operating the world-famous Sazerac Coffeehouse in the French Quarter. Handy, originally from Maryland, worked for Schiller at the Sazerac Coffeehouse, and later went on to establish a successful importing and wholesale liquor business. Together, in New Orleans, these two people played a role in the early days of cocktail making that helped set the standard and inspiration for cocktails.