I’ve been trying to come up with something profound to say about Manhattan and honestly, I’ve got nothing. “You can’t beat a good Manhattan” sums it up nicely, because if you think about it- while I have nothing against Martinis, that’s a lot of very hardcore booze. I know people get really intense about their traditional, classic martinis (not the eighteen million variations of all flavors, etc that you can get) and whether to use gin or vodka, how much vermouth- do you just sort of wave the vermouth bottle at it? Do you add measurable amounts? What about a twist of lemon? Olives? Onions?
I have nothing against any of that. People are allowed to have their passions about what they drink, it’s just that to me when you get right down to the nitty-gritty of a classic martini, you’re essentially drinking a glass of ice-cold vodka (or gin) with a splash of vermouth in it. There’s an argument to be made that people should just embrace their love of drinking copious amounts of alcohol and go straight to brown bagging it.
Now, Manhattans (obviously) have an equal amount of hardcore booze, but there’s an actual flavor profile to this drink that makes it (in my opinion) a far more enjoyable cocktail to mix up and sip on.
The basic recipe:
2 oz of rye whiskey
1 oz Sweet Vermouth
1 dash Angostura bitters
Garnish with a cherry
You can shake it in a shaker, strain it and serve it all fancy-like (as I did in my picture above) but you can also have it on the rocks too- which is a nice option if you don’t want to bother with all the extra equipment and shaking and straining and all that jazz.
There are an impossible amount of variations, ranging from the Black Manhattan to the Southern Manhattan and everything in between— I did not get too crazy with mine. I had a notion to try every whiskey I owned into this recipe to see how it did, but I stopped short of that and settled for bourbon (some Four Roses I have kicking around) and then some Cold Brew Jameson (10/10 can highly recommend this one- completely changed the flavor profile and made it richer and almost more chocolatey in a way.)
Mainly, however, I stuck with the rye whiskey and the results were delicious.
Personally, I think it’s the cherries that make this cocktail for me. I am bougie with my cherries. I freely admit that I use Luxardo cherries or Amaretto Cherries both of which are delicious and if you dribble just a little bit of the syrup in there too, it just adds a beautiful burst of cherry flavor to the cocktail.
What else can I say about Manhattan? Well, it’s one of Embury’s six basic drinks from his 1948 classic, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, so if there’s a Mount Rushmore of Mixology, you could argue that this cocktail would be somewhere on it.
The wiki-page turned up a delightful connection to Winston Churchill, claiming that the Manhattan Club in New York was the origin of the drink, invented specifically for a banquet hosted by Jennie Jerome, or as she later/better known as Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston. Sadly, however, it turns out she was in France and pregnant at the time, so the story probably doesn’t pan out.
There are multiple accounts of its origin, but everything seems to be pretty clear wherever it sprung from, it was either on the island of Manhattan or New York.
(A fun tangent: the North Frisian island of Fohr, it’s a standard cocktail for absolutely everybody- thanks to ancestors who went to Manhattan and brought it back on fishing trips.)
We’re heading into a weekend, so if you’ve got a hankering for a delicious cocktail, then make yourself a Manhattan.