Remember the Maine
Remember the Maine comes with a war correspondent attached. Charles H. Baker Jr. recorded it in The Gentleman’s Companion in 1939, having drunk it in Havana in 1933 with machine-gun fire in the streets outside, and his instruction survives alongside the spec: stir it briskly, and treat it “with the respect it deserves”. The name reaches back further still, to the battleship Maine, whose sinking in Havana harbour in 1898 lit the Spanish-American War under the headline the drink borrows. What Baker wrote down is a Manhattan that has been somewhere. Rye and sweet vermouth as expected, then cherry liqueur deepening the vermouth’s fruit into something darker, and a quarter-teaspoon of absinthe threading anise through all of it. Baker’s books are better literature than they are bartending, and a good many of his recipes need editing before they are drinkable. This one he transcribed straight, and it needs no correction: one of the great named Manhattans, with the rare quality of tasting like its own history.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish: Maraschino Cherry
Ingredients
60ml
The foundation, and the reason a dark cherried drink stays upright. Rye’s spice runs against the fruit rather than with it, which is what keeps this from reading as sweet.
22.5ml
The Manhattan inheritance, at a reduced measure to make room for the cherry liqueur beside it. A rich Italian style suits the drink better than a lighter, drier one.
15ml
The dark heart of it: a rich European cherry liqueur in the Heering style, deepening the vermouth’s fruit. Dry maraschino is a different creature and makes a different drink.
7.5ml
A quarter-teaspoon, stirred through rather than rinsed, binding the rye’s spice to the cherry’s fruit. Measure it rather than eyeballing it.
Instructions
Add the rye, sweet vermouth, cherry liqueur and absinthe to a mixing glass with ice.
Stir briskly for 20 seconds, as Baker insisted.
Strain into a chilled coupe.
Garnish with a brandied cherry.
Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 13 August 2026.
Expert Tip
The absinthe is measured in fractions of a teaspoon for a reason. It is there to haunt the drink rather than occupy it, and at a full bar-spoon it stops being an accent and starts being the flavour, which turns a dark cherried Manhattan into a sweet Sazerac. A quarter-teaspoon, stirred in with everything else rather than rinsed around the glass. Get the cherry liqueur right and the rest follows: a rich European one in the Heering style, not dry maraschino, which is a different spirit doing a different job and makes a sharper, thinner drink. Stir briskly, as Baker insisted, and give it a full twenty seconds; the cherry needs dilution to open out.
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbour in February 1898, the American press blamed Spain, and “Remember the Maine” became the slogan of the war that followed.
Thirty-five years later Charles H. Baker Jr. drank the cocktail that carries the phrase in a Havana convulsed by the 1933 revolution, and wrote the scene into The Gentleman’s Companion when it was published in 1939. It is the rare cocktail recipe with gunfire in the footnotes, and Baker’s instruction to treat the drink with the respect it deserves reads as half joke and half warning about the evening he was having.
A Manhattan With an Accent
The bones are entirely familiar: rye and sweet vermouth, stirred, up. What separates this is what has been laid over them.
The vermouth measure comes down to make room for the cherry liqueur, and the two together read as one deeper, darker fruit rather than as vermouth with something added. The absinthe then runs a thread of anise through the whole thing. It puts the drink in the same New Orleans-accented territory as the Sazerac and the Vieux Carré, stirred whiskey drinks where the small ingredients do the storytelling and the large ones hold the frame.
The Cherry Liqueur
A rich European cherry liqueur in the Heering style is what the spec intends: dark stone fruit with real weight, deepening the vermouth rather than sweetening the drink toward candy.
Dry maraschino is a different creature entirely. It is distilled from marasca cherries including the stones, which gives it a nutty, faintly bitter character, and it makes a sharper and much thinner version of this. Fifteen millilitres is the balance point at which the cherry reads as depth rather than dessert. Push past twenty and the rye starts losing the argument.
The Absinthe Thread
A quarter-teaspoon is the entire dose, and it is stirred in rather than rinsed around the glass. That distinction matters: a rinse would put the anise on the nose and leave the body alone, where stirring it through binds the rye’s spice to the cherry’s fruit from the inside.
Measure it honestly. Absinthe is the strongest thing in the glass by some distance, and eyeballing a quarter-teaspoon usually means pouring a half. The line between haunted and liquorice is a matter of drops.
How to Serve It
Up, cold, and with the story told, because it is a drink that repays the telling. It belongs to the same hours as the Manhattan and the Vieux Carré, and it converts Manhattan drinkers at a rate no other variation manages.
A brandied cherry is the right garnish, picking up the liqueur rather than adding anything new. Stir briskly, as Baker said, and give it the full twenty seconds; the cherry liqueur needs dilution to open out, and served under-stirred the drink arrives thick and closed.
The Spirit
Whiskey (Rye)The whiskey the American classics were written for. Rye is dry and peppery where bourbon is sweet and broad, and a Manhattan or a Sazerac built on the wrong one is a noticeably different drink rather than a near miss.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Remember the Maine refer to?
The USS Maine, whose sinking in Havana harbour in 1898 helped spark the Spanish-American War under that newspaper slogan. Charles H. Baker Jr. drank the cocktail in Havana in 1933 and recorded both the drink and its name.
Cherry Heering or maraschino?
A rich, dark cherry liqueur in the Heering style. The drink wants stone-fruit depth, and dry maraschino brings a nutty bitterness instead, which makes a sharper and thinner version. The two are not interchangeable here.
How is it different from a Manhattan?
Start with a Manhattan, cut the vermouth back to make room for cherry liqueur, and stir a quarter-teaspoon of absinthe through it. The result is darker, fruitier and carries an anise thread the original has no equivalent for.
Why stir the absinthe instead of rinsing the glass?
A rinse puts the anise on the nose and leaves the body of the drink untouched. Stirred through, it binds the rye’s spice to the cherry’s fruit from the inside, which is where this drink needs the connection made.
Master the Techniques
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Manhattan
The Manhattan is the oldest documented whiskey cocktail in the American canon and the template for every stirred, spirit-forward classic that followed. It appeared in bar guides of the 1880s already described as an established drink, suggesting an origin in the 1870s. The most commonly cited account places its creation at the Manhattan Club in New York, at a banquet hosted by Lady Randolph Churchill in honour of presidential candidate Samuel Tilden; the account is disputed, Lady Churchill being documented elsewhere on the date in question, but the Manhattan Club association remains the most plausible origin available. What it established is the shape rather than the recipe: a base spirit, a fortified wine and a bitter, stirred cold and served up. That structure is the foundation of the Vieux Carré, the Boulevardier, the Rob Roy, and every other stirred whiskey drink that followed, and understanding it is the most direct route into that entire family. The sweet vermouth is the variable that most determines the finished drink. A stale or poorly chosen vermouth does not simply diminish the Manhattan; it defines it. The drink’s simplicity leaves the vermouth nowhere to hide.
Sazerac
The Sazerac is one of the oldest documented cocktails in American history, originating in New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century and taking its name from the Sazerac de Forge et Fils cognac that formed its original base. The switch from cognac to rye came gradually, accelerated by the phylloxera epidemic that devastated French vineyards in the 1870s and made cognac scarce across the American market. By the time cognac returned, rye had become the standard and has remained so ever since. It is a three-ingredient drink dressed with an absinthe rinse and a lemon peel expressed and discarded. The absinthe coats the glass, the lemon oils land on the surface, and neither remains in the drink in any measurable volume, yet both are present in every sip in a way that adding them directly cannot replicate. That indirection is the technique. New Orleans has argued about the correct build for as long as the drink has existed. The version here uses rye, Peychaud's with a single dash of Angostura, and a sugar cube.
Vieux Carré
The Vieux Carré was created by Walter Bergeron, head bartender at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, in the 1930s. The name means old square in French, for the French Quarter in which the hotel has sat since 1886. It is one of the most complex stirred drinks in the classical canon, built on a split base of rye whiskey and cognac with sweet vermouth and Bénédictine. That it is less widely known than the Sazerac or La Louisiane is a question of exposure rather than quality. The split spirit base is the structural decision that most defines the drink. Rye provides spice, grip, and a dry backbone; cognac provides dried fruit, warmth, and a roundness the rye alone could not achieve; at equal parts they produce a base more layered than either spirit at full volume. The bitters are where the versions part company. The official specification lists Peychaud's alone, where its anise and floral character sit directly against the Bénédictine. Bergeron's own build carried Angostura alongside it, in the New Orleans split-bitters tradition that also produced the Sazerac, and that version is below.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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