Pratt Standard
Washington DC’s craft syrup house, founded 2015 by Tiffany MacIsaac and Kelly Gordon. Vintage-leaning—their tonic syrup is built around quinine extracted from real cinchona bark, their grenadine is real pomegranate, their cocktail cherries come in a syrup you’d actually want to drink. Modern craft with a traditionalist approach.
Pratt Standard is the kind of company that makes sense once you’ve been to its DC neighborhood—Brookland, formerly residential, now full of small craft producers. Founders Tiffany MacIsaac (a chef) and Kelly Gordon (a bartender) launched the company in 2015 with three products: a tonic syrup, a grenadine, and a cocktail cherry. The ethos was traditionalist—real quinine, real pomegranate, real Luxardo-style brandied cherries—but the production was modern: small batches, made in DC, sold direct and through specialty retailers.
For exotic cocktail purposes, the two products to know are Pratt Standard Tonic Syrup (the best home tonic available, made with real cinchona bark; mix one part syrup to four parts soda water for a real G&T) and Pratt Standard Grenadine (real pomegranate, real pomegranate-molasses notes, no Red 40—the only commercial grenadine that doesn’t make you wish you’d made your own).
What sets Pratt apart from the other craft syrup houses is the cherries. Pratt Standard Cocktail Cherries are dark, brandied, and packed in a real cherry-and-spice syrup—similar to Luxardo Maraschino Cherries but with a slightly less assertive maraschino note, more dark fruit and bourbon spice. For garnishing Old Fashioneds and Manhattans and the occasional adjacent classic, they’re a step up from anything mass-produced.
Pratt doesn’t make orgeat, gum syrup, or the deeper tiki-specific syrup categories—that’s where Small Hand Foods and Liber pick up. But for tonic, grenadine, and cocktail cherries, Pratt is the contemporary craft standard.
Buy: Amazon for fastest shipping; direct at prattstandard.com for the full catalog including seasonal and limited releases.