The Vanilla Bitters That Turn Bourbon Cocktails Up To Eleven

An expertly-made bourbon cocktail, whether it's at a swanky cocktail lounge or at your mixologist friend's place, can often be finished off with bitters. The use of cocktail bitters in boozy drinks offers a balance of sweetness and a touch of flavor depending on the type used. Any bourbon drinker might know that this offer a nice finishing touch to the strong liquor, but there are many brands and varieties to choose from. To avoid wasting your favorite bourbon, we set out to test the best bitters for bourbon cocktails so your drink tastes as good as your go-to watering hole.

To figure it out, our writer James Hastings tried 14 different bitters — and one of the best turned out to be El Guapo's Barrel-Aged Vanilla bitters. One reason that this stands out for a bourbon cocktail is its vanilla essence. Some types of bourbon have notes of vanilla, and the bitters will complement the flavor profile and balance out the taste of the alcohol. Hastings says it also enhances the caramel notes often found in bourbon. The oaky notes from the barrel-aged technique make it a good pairing for a dessert cocktail to offset the sweetness. Add a squirt to a bourbon sour to try out the vanilla bitters, per Hastings' advice. 

El Guapo's bitters can be purchased from the New Orleans-based company directly for around $20. The reason behind the flavors discovered in our tasting might have to do with the use of the purely wild-pollinated vanilla bean that the company imports all the way from Zanzibar, which is near the coast of Tanzania. The oaky flavor that combines with the vanilla comes from the use of barrels of Roulaison Rum, an award-winning brand also based in New Orleans. If our review and the unique ingredients procured to make the bitters aren't convincing enough, the product has a 4.9-star rating on Google — so others agree.

To try the bitters in a bourbon sour as James Hastings suggests, try it in our classic frothy whiskey sour cocktail recipe. For every drink, just a few dashes of the vanilla bitters will enhance the drink so don't overdo it. We also think it's worth dashing into our spiced chai old fashioned or classic Manhattan recipes if a bourbon sour isn't your drink of choice.