Manhattans
20 recipes
This Field Manual holds 20 recipes in the manhattan family. A manhattan is whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters, stirred and served up. The martini’s sibling, built on a spirit that does not need protecting.
Rye is the traditional choice because its pepper cuts the vermouth’s sweetness, and bourbon makes a rounder, softer drink. The vermouth is the variable that matters most: it is wine, it oxidises, and a bottle open for a month makes a flat manhattan out of a good whiskey. Change the ratio towards the vermouth and you are moving towards a perfect manhattan, then towards a Rob Roy if the whiskey turns Scotch.
Base Spirit
Difficulty Level
Affinity
The Affinity is Scotch and both vermouths in equal thirds, with Angostura. Thirty millilitres of each, stirred, up. Equal thirds is the part worth noticing. A Rob Roy is Scotch
Algonquin
The Algonquin carries the name of the hotel where the Round Table sharpened its knives. Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott and the rest of the Vicious Circle
Black Manhattan
The Black Manhattan asks a simple heretical question: what if the vermouth were replaced entirely by amaro? Todd Smith posed it at Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco in 2005,
Blackthorn
The Blackthorn is a Manhattan built on sloe gin instead of whiskey. Sloe gin, sweet vermouth and orange bitters, stirred cold and served up. The sloe brings plum and almond where
Blood & Sand
The Blood & Sand was created to coincide with the 1922 Rudolph Valentino film of the same name and appeared in Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930. It is one of a very
Bobby Burns
The Bobby Burns is the Rob Roy with a library card: Scotch and sweet vermouth as before, seasoned with a barspoon of Bénédictine, the honeyed herbal liqueur of the Norman abbeys,
Brooklyn
The Brooklyn is a dry Manhattan with two seasonings: a barspoon of maraschino and a barspoon of Amer Picon. Jacob Grohusko printed it in Jack's Manual in 1908, and it is the drink
Corpse Reviver No. 1
The Corpse Reviver No. 1 appeared in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, presented alongside its more famous sibling as part of a loosely connected family of restorative
Diamondback
The Diamondback is three strong bottles and nothing else: rye, calvados and yellow Chartreuse, stirred and served up. There is no citrus, no sugar and no soda. Whatever softening
El Presidente
El Presidente was created in Havana during the 1910s or 1920s, most likely at the Vista Alegre bar, and named in honour of Mario García Menocal, President of Cuba in that era. It
Harvard
The Harvard belongs to the 1890s fashion for naming Manhattan variations after universities: the drink appears in George Kappeler’s 1895 Modern American Drinks alongside its
La Louisiane
La Louisiane was the house cocktail of Restaurant La Louisiane, one of New Orleans' most storied dining establishments, and appeared in Stanley Clisby Arthur's 1937 guide "Famous
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
Red Hook
The Red Hook is a Brooklyn that can actually be made. The original calls for Amer Picon, a French bitter orange aperitif that stopped reaching America decades ago and was
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
Rob Roy
The Rob Roy was created at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in 1894, named after the premiere of a comic opera based on the life of the Scottish folk hero Robert Roy MacGregor. It
The Emerald
The Emerald is the Manhattan carried across the Atlantic: Irish whiskey over sweet vermouth with orange bitters, stirred cold and strained into a coupe under a lemon twist. It was
Tipperary
The Tipperary is Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth and green Chartreuse, and it is the boldest thing Irish whiskey does anywhere in the classic canon. Everything else the spirit
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
Widow’s Kiss
The Widow’s Kiss is autumn in a coupe and one of the oldest sophisticated drinks in the American canon. George Kappeler printed it in Modern American Drinks in 1895: calvados