"Just-Jen" Old Fashioned

• 2 oz Bourbon 
• ½ oz Amaro dell'Etna
• ¼ oz Maraschino liqueur
• ¼ oz Dry Curaçao 
• 3 dsh Angostura bitters
• 1 bsp Maple syrup
• Stir with ice for 20-30 seconds 
• Strain over a rock of ice into a chilled Old Fashioned glass
• Add splash of seltzer for effervescence
• Garnish with an orange twist, an amarena cherry, or both

Happy Friday, friends!

Settling into a new job has me thinking about another kind of settling in: a house cocktail.

And when I think of house-standard cocktails, I think of our “Just-Jen” Old Fashioned.

The recipe itself is probably not unique. It’s a riff on a riff on an Old Fashioned. But then, that’s what most Old Fashioneds are: variations on a familiar, endlessly adaptable template.

Still, as the name implies, the “Just-Jen” Old Fashioned comes with a story.

It was late spring 2022, and I had just spent a week at an employee event for my then-new employer, Gainsight, in New Orleans–a city I had never visited before. I was excited to be there, especially because it fell during the backend of the COVID pandemic, when cocktail-making had become one of my pandemic hobbies. The timing also meant we were still living with the threat of a second wave, Omicron included.

While I was there, I had a chance to wander Bourbon Street in the late afternoon before the nightlife fully took over. At one of the nicer bars, I ordered the house Old Fashioned.

It was a different take on the drink than the version I was used to. Instead of muddled orange and cherry, it used a small amount of dry Curaçao and maraschino liqueur. That struck me as a much cleaner solution: the same fruit presence, but without the muddling hassle.

So I brought that idea home with me.

I also brought Omicron home with me, which laid me out for a week. Thankfully, I had already received at least the first round of vaccines, and maybe the second, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

By summer, I still had that New Orleans Old Fashioned on my mind. But I also wanted to add a unifier–something that could echo the fruit notes while bringing more complexity to the bourbon. If you’ve been reading Flavor Notes for any length of time, you can probably guess the category I reached for.

An amaro, of course. Specifically, an orange-forward one that could bring classic bitter spice and a real citrus thread. As it turns  out, I selected something easy enough to find on both sides of the border: Amaro dell’Etna.

Amaro dell’Etna is a classic bittersweet Sicilian digestif, crafted in Sicily since 1901. It features a highly aromatic blend of 26 botanicals drawn from the mineral-rich volcanic soils around Mount Etna. Like many Italian amaros, it began as a medicinal tonic, originally formulated to soothe fatigue among sailors and fishermen working along the Sicilian coast. Though it’s a little over a century old, it didn’t reach the North American market until 2017, where it quickly became a bartender favorite.

The nose is rich and caramelly, with a distinctly herbal Mediterranean character. Bright citrus zest, delicate floral notes, and wild herbs rise first, but the balance is what makes it work: bitter orange peel, Sicilian licorice, rhubarb, vanilla, and baking spice, all in the right proportions to play beautifully with bourbon, dry Curaçao, and maraschino.

That summer, my wife had one of her colleagues over for the evening, and I was put to work behind the bar making the first round. Her colleague–Jen–was someone she worked closely with, so communication between them was frequent. A call once came through while we were all at home, and afterward our daughter asked who had called.

“It was just Jen,” my wife said.

And that was the beginning of Just-Jen as a household nickname.

Before making the first round, I asked, “How do you feel about an Old Fashioned?”

“Sounds great,” Just-Jen replied.

And without any of us quite realizing it in the moment, the “Just-Jen” Old Fashioned was born.

The subtle orange aroma welcomes you in before the first sip. The bourbon gives the drink its backbone, but the longer you sit with it, the more the orange and cherry notes reveal themselves. The bourbon’s caramel notes, the maraschino’s brightness, and the amaro’s anise and orange weave together across the palate. On the finish, the bourbon’s baking spice, the amaro’s herbs, and Angostura’s warm spice settle in for a long, elegant close that invites another sip.

To this day, Just-Jen still asks for a “Just-Jen” Old Fashioned. Unfortunately, she lives in Ohio now and we’re in British Columbia, so the request comes much less often.

At the end of my second full week with my new employer, Iron Mountain, I’m thinking a lot about the dynamics of starting over.

There’s the learning curve: new teammates, a new manager, a broader stakeholder orbit, the company’s brand, its legacy, and the challenges already in motion. There’s also the reality that every new role comes with a firehose of information. At a company the size of Iron Mountain, it’s less a single firehose than several all at once. Thankfully, I’m being given enough space to onboard without being rushed into immediate commitments.

For many people, starting a new role at a new company can feel like a nightmare. Often that’s because they’ve been with one employer for most of their career. For me, though, this is my seventh role in 11 years—the downside of spending so much of my professional life in the U.S. SaaS industry. After enough transitions, those changes become one of your strengths: you learn to get in quickly, listen hard, build trust, identify champions, deliver early wins, and set yourself up for long-term impact.

In some ways, it’s a lot like being a student–especially in college or graduate school. Your real skill isn’t just what you know when you leave; it’s how well you learn, adapt, and show up under pressure.

Still, even with a long track record of transitions, there’s always the question of when an opportunity starts to feel like it has real staying power.

The best lesson I’ve learned across all these jobs is to focus on what I can control: doing the work, delivering the value I know I can deliver, and staying present in the process. Owning this new Center of Excellence practice. Taking responsibility when I stumble. Delivering actionable insights with integrity. Supporting the team I inherited, which is the first team of insights professionals I’ve worked with in 10 years. Creatively delivering value for stakeholders. And doing my best to contribute meaningfully to the Iron Mountain community and to my Mountaineer teammates.

Staying power comes from staying present, delivering value consistently, and getting a little lucky along the way.

Just like making lifelong friends worth naming cocktails after.

So with this “Just-Jen” Old Fashioned, I raise a toast to friends like Just-Jen, to new jobs, to staying power, and to the hope that a little luck keeps showing up at the right moments.

Cheers! 🥃🏔️🍀