Manhattan

What to expect

Taste

Sweet at the front and dry at the back, which is a rarer shape than it sounds. The vermouth arrives first because it is the sweetest thing in the glass and the least alcoholic: bitter orange, dried cherry, wormwood, a herbal edge somewhere between medicine and cake spice. Then the rye, which is the reason for using rye — it is peppery and dry where bourbon is round and sweet, with a distinct rasping spice through the middle that keeps the vermouth from turning the drink into a dessert. The Angostura is only two dashes and it changes everything: clove, cinnamon, gentian and a real bitterness that pulls the whole finish dry. There is no citrus anywhere in this drink and no acidity to speak of, so the structure is entirely sweetness against bitterness.

Aroma

Cake spice and dried fruit, more than whiskey. The Angostura is the loudest thing above the glass despite being the smallest measure — clove and cinnamon and something faintly medicinal — and the vermouth's herbs sit under it. The whiskey shows as grain and a little oak vanilla, and it is quieter cold than it will be after five minutes. If the drink smells sharp, sour or of nothing much, the vermouth has oxidised.

Texture

Weighty for something so small. Stirring adds no air, so it has no lightness at all — the mouthfeel is dense and slightly syrupy from the vermouth's sugar and glycerol, and it coats. That weight is the reason it is sipped rather than drunk, and it is what distinguishes a stirred drink from a shaken one more clearly than temperature does.

Sound

The quietest drink on the site. A bar spoon in a glass of ice makes a low continuous chiming rattle for half a minute — a sound that changes pitch as the cubes round off and the drink thickens — and then a thin pour, and then silence. There is no fizz, no ice in the serving glass, nothing settling.

How the flavour moves

Sweetness first and immediately — vermouth and the cherry's syrup if you used it. Then a wave of spice as the rye arrives, hotter and drier than the opening suggested. The bitters come last and lowest, and the finish is the longest part of the drink: clove, gentian, a dry tannic grip and a slow warmth down the throat. It ends considerably drier than it starts, which is precisely why it works before dinner as well as after. Across the glass the arc runs sweeter and heavier as it warms.

Serve it

Cold rather than freezing, at around minus 2°C, and it warms faster than a martini because it has more sugar in it. That is not folklore: sugar depresses the freezing point and raises the perceived temperature at which a drink starts tasting heavy, so a Manhattan that has stood for fifteen minutes tastes syrupy and hot in a way a martini does not. It is dull by room temperature. Chill the glass, and if you are a slow drinker use one large cube.

Goes with

Fat, salt and char. Steak, obviously, and it is one of the few cocktails that survives a meal rather than preceding it. Roast pork and anything with crackling. Aged cheddar, comté, blue cheese. Salted nuts, especially pecans. Dark chocolate at the end. It handles smoke well, so it sits beside barbecue better than wine does. Where it fails is against anything delicate, sour or green — it flattens fish, salad and most vegetables completely.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy, with one thing to get right: the stir. There is no shaking, no citrus and no balancing to do — the ratio is fixed and the ingredients do not vary much — so a Manhattan is almost entirely a test of whether you stirred it long enough and whether your vermouth is fresh.

Cost

Moderate. Rye is the main cost and a bottle makes a great many drinks; vermouth is inexpensive but must be replaced regularly, which is the hidden expense of this drink. Good cocktail cherries cost more than people expect and last for years.

Equipment

A mixing glass — a jug or a pint glass will do, but not a shaker tin, because you cannot see when the outside frosts. A bar spoon, or any long-handled spoon. A julep or hawthorne strainer. A jigger. A coupe, chilled. Nothing else.

When to make it

Cold months, early evening, and with or after a substantial meal. It is a poor summer drink and a poor lunchtime one.

Best season

None in the ingredients, everything in the temperament. It is a winter drink.

You know it is done when

The outside of the mixing glass frosts over and stays frosted. Inside, the liquid takes on a slight viscosity — you can see it move more heavily around the spoon than it did at the start, which is the change the recipe means by 'taken on a little weight'.

And it feels like

Cold enough that the back of your hand cannot stay on the glass, and thick enough that the drink coats the spoon slightly. If it still feels thin and tastes hot, it needs another ten seconds.

Food safety

Nothing raw. Worth being plain about the strength: 90ml of alcohol-bearing liquid in a small glass with only stirring to dilute it makes this one of the strongest drinks in the collection.

Where it goes wrong

Old vermouth. This is the mistake, and it is responsible for more disappointing Manhattans than every other cause combined — an open bottle at room temperature is flat within weeks and sour within months, and because the vermouth is only a third of the drink people conclude they do not like Manhattans. After that: shaking it, which clouds it and thins it; under-stirring, which leaves it hot and harsh; using a bright red glacé cherry, which is a confectionery product and tastes like one; and buying a large bottle of vermouth when you will make four drinks a month.

If it does go wrong

Tastes flat, sour or papery: the vermouth is oxidised. Nothing will fix the drink; open a fresh bottle and keep it in the fridge. Tastes hot and harsh: under-stirred — put it back over ice for another ten seconds, which works, or accept it. Watery: over-stirred, or the ice was small and wet. Too sweet: check whether your vermouth is one of the sweeter styles, and take it to 25ml, or push the rye to 70ml. Too dry or medicinal: add a bar spoon of the cherry syrup rather than sugar syrup.

Making it ahead

It batches better than almost any other cocktail, because there is nothing perishable and nothing carbonated in it. Mix rye, vermouth and bitters in proportion, add water equal to about 22 per cent of the total to stand in for the stir, bottle it and keep it in the freezer. It pours straight into a chilled glass, it will not freeze solid at that strength, and it is genuinely indistinguishable from one made to order. It keeps for weeks.

Keeping it

The drink keeps for nothing. The vermouth, once open, keeps for about a month in the fridge and is the only perishable thing here.

Reheating

Not applicable.

Freezing

The drink can be batched and frozen — see Making it ahead — which is unusual and works well.

Leftovers

None.

Scaling it

Two at a time is comfortable in a mixing glass; more than that and there is not enough ice contact to chill evenly. For a group, batch and freeze as above — it is the right answer rather than a compromise.

Substitutions

Bourbon instead of rye is the standard alternative and makes a sweeter, rounder, softer drink; it is not wrong, it is simply the other version, and it is what most American bars will give you if you do not specify. Scotch makes a Rob Roy. Swapping half the sweet vermouth for dry makes a Perfect Manhattan, which is drier and more herbal. Orange bitters in place of, or alongside, the Angostura is a common and good variation.

Dietary swaps

Vegan, dairy-free and nut-free as written. Not reliably gluten-free: rye whiskey is distilled from grain and while distillation removes gluten protein, people who avoid grain spirits entirely should know what it is made from. Cocktail cherries sometimes carry sulphites and colourings — check the jar.

Shopping for it

A rye with a genuinely high rye content, since that is the peppery character the drink is built around; many American whiskeys labelled rye are only just over the legal minimum. An Italian-style sweet red vermouth. Preserved cocktail cherries in syrup — the dark, firm, unbleached kind — rather than glacé cherries, which are a different product made by a different process. Angostura is effectively the standard and there is no reason to look further.

Keeping the cost down

Buy the smallest bottle of vermouth you can find rather than the cheapest large one. Vermouth is inexpensive and perishable, and a 375ml bottle finished in a month is better value than a litre finished in a year even though the litre costs less per millilitre. For the whiskey, a mid-range rye is the sweet spot — the vermouth and bitters will flatten the subtleties of anything expensive.

Sustainability

Nothing notable. The vermouth is the item most likely to be thrown away half-used, and buying small bottles is both the cheaper and the less wasteful choice.

Nutrition

Around 190 calories and roughly 2.4 UK units, which is a great deal in 110ml. Almost all of the calories are alcohol; the sugar comes from the vermouth and is modest.

Worth it?

Worth it, and it is the best value-for-effort drink in the collection. Three ingredients, no citrus to squeeze, no shaking, and it batches into the freezer so that the second one takes ten seconds. If you only ever learn one stirred cocktail, learn this one — and then buy a small bottle of vermouth and keep it cold.

Where it comes from

Origin

New York City, in the 1880s. Named for the island, and part of the first generation of American cocktails built on imported Italian vermouth.

Also called

Manhattan throughout.

Said out loud

As it looks.

What the name means

The borough. Whether it is named for the Manhattan Club specifically or simply for the place is the part of the story that does not survive scrutiny.

History

The much-repeated account has the drink invented at the Manhattan Club in 1874 at a banquet given by Lady Randolph Churchill for Samuel J. Tilden. It is a good story and it is demonstrably wrong: she was in England at the time, and gave birth to Winston Churchill that November. What is better attested is the timing rather than the person — printed references to the drink cluster in the mid-1880s, which is exactly when sweet vermouth became common in American bars, and William F. Mulhall of the Hoffman House later recalled it being popularised in that decade by a Broadway bar owner named Black. The Manhattan is best understood not as one person's invention but as the most successful of a wave of whiskey-and-vermouth drinks, of which the Martinez and the Rob Roy are the surviving siblings.

Why it matters

It is the drink that established the template every spirit-and-vermouth cocktail has followed since, the martini included, and it has never gone out of service in nearly a century and a half. It also carries a particular cultural weight in America as the serious drinker's order — the thing you ask for when you want to be given whiskey but not neat whiskey.

When it is eaten

Before dinner or after it, in cold weather, and traditionally in the early evening. It is an indoor drink and a slow one.

The traditional way

Stirred, never shaken, and this is one of the few rules in cocktail-making with a real reason behind it rather than a snobbish one. Shaking aerates and clouds the drink and drops its temperature faster than it dilutes it, which suits a drink with citrus in it and actively damages one that is all spirit and wine. A shaken Manhattan is cloudy, thin and cold, and loses the weight that is the whole character of the drink.

How it changed

The ratio has moved steadily towards the whiskey. Nineteenth-century versions are close to equal parts and often carry gum syrup or curaçao as well; the 2:1 here is the twentieth-century settlement and some modern bars push to 3:1. The whiskey changed too, and not by choice: American rye almost disappeared after Prohibition, bourbon replaced it in the drink for most of the twentieth century, and the rye revival of the 2000s brought the original grain back.

Regional variations

The bourbon version is effectively the American default and the rye version the specialist's order, which reverses the historical position. A Rob Roy is the same drink with Scotch, a Perfect Manhattan splits the vermouth between sweet and dry, and a Black Manhattan replaces the vermouth with Averna, which is a genuinely different and much more bitter drink.

How this version differs

Rye rather than bourbon, and 2:1 rather than anything sweeter. The unusual instruction is the one about cherry syrup: most recipes treat the cherry as garnish, and a spoonful of the syrup from a good jar is a better sweetener for this drink than sugar because it brings the same dried-fruit note the vermouth already has.

Sources and credit

The 1880s dating and the Mulhall recollection are the standard account among drinks historians. The Churchill story is repeated here only to say plainly that it is false.

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