This truly classic drink that survived various historical upheavals like prohibitions, wars and the great depression is also the first cocktail that used Vermouth as a modifier long before the Rob Roy, Bobby Burns, and Martini.
We first hear of the Manhattan cocktail in an article written in 1882 about a cocktail called The Manhattan that people were drinking in New York and by 1888 it is one of the most popular drinks in the country. It was the time when Vermouth was the new ingredient for cocktails!
The circumstances of The Manhattan’s creation are not clear since, unlike present times, in the 1800s, cocktails were drunk and not catalogued about. One of the popular stories till recent times was that the drink was created for the great Winston Churchill’s mother, Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome) in November 1874 at the Manhattan Club in a celebratory banquet for Samuel Jones Tilden being elected as the governor of New York. This story, however, is untrue as, during this time, Lady Randolph was in Blenheim, England, about to give birth to Winston Churchill!
The Manhattan Club’s history also claims that the cocktail was created there. By 1890 everyone believed the lore. Their recipe calls for equal parts of rye whisky and vermouth with orange bitters. Though there is no record of what kind of whiskey the initial Manhattan was made with, it probably was rye whiskey, as at the said time, New York was drinking rye whiskey and not bourbon. It just could be that the Manhattan Club was responsible for popularising the cocktail.
Another version comes from an essay by William F. Mulhall in the 1923 issue of the Valentine’s Manual of Old New York. Mulhall was a bartender at the Hoffman House in 1880. He mentions that, “The Manhattan cocktail was invented by a man named Black, who kept a place ten doors below Houston Street on Broadway in the sixties – probably the most famous mixed drink in the world in its time.” Well, there seems to be some written evidence in a New York newspaper of a Mr. Black owning a bar called the Manhattan Inn at that time.
Many suggest and that the Manhattan was originally created as an homage to the New York borough
The first recipe for a Manhattan appeared in the 1884 edition of three books – O.H Byron’s The Modern Bartender’s Guide; George Winter’s How to Mix Drinks: A Bartender’s Manual; J.W Gibson’s Scientific Bar Keeping and new fancy mixed drinks
Whoever thought up the formula for the Manhattan, the classic potion that integrates Whiskey with Sweet Vermouth & bitters came up with a truly marvelous drink
MANHATTAN
INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
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