Enjoyed: Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Listed on the menu: Yes, simply as “Old Fashioned.”

Ingredients: Woodford Reserve Bourbon, Muscovado, and Angostura Bitters.

The occasion: This was our first evening in Croatia! We left Venice in the morning, spent the afternoon in lush Motovun, on the gorgeous Istrian Peninsula. For the next two days, our plans were to further explore Istria, and especially the seaside town of Rovinj. Our inn was only a few blocks away from this waterside bar, and we so enjoyed sitting on a bench and watching the sun set over the Adriatic Sea.

My rating: **** out of 5. The muscovado sugar gave the drink a rich, brown sugar sweetness. Woodford is always a good idea, and this cocktail lived up to expectations. I appreciated the orange oil around the edge, which showed me that the young bartender was knowledgeable about this “American” cocktail.

Final thoughts: We wanted to have cocktails in this incredibly-situated bar–it appeared to just hang into the sea–and we will never forget this evening. However, we soon discovered for ourselves that Croatians make delicious and complex wines, so we focused on wines for the next week and a half of our stay. And also, we learned that Croatians will not sit on hard, cold surfaces, for fear of catching a variety of ailments, so every bar provided patrons with ample cushions and lap blankets.