The Manhattan is arguably a more forgiving model you don’t need a flashy whiskey or vermouth to make a good Manhattan. And I have chronicled my struggle to find a balanced Sidecar-another three-ingredient classic-in these pages. The Daiquiri is, perhaps, the more notable case of a simple, classic cocktail that can easily fall apart if the proportions and ingredients aren’t just so. But the flip side on that perceived ease is that the fewer the ingredients there are, the greater the need is for skill and discipline in getting them in alliance. Like many classic cocktails, the Manhattan looks simple on paper: three ingredients, all easy to acquire. “I use free license to use whatever bitters I want based on the whiskey and vermouth,” said Teague. Asked about bartender mistakes they had encountered when ordering Manhattans, the panelists all cited shaken Manhattans as the most common sin, but a few also pointed to the omission of bitters (“Bitters is that central spoke” to the drink, Simó said) and the tendency of some bars mix them with too little vermouth, thinking they’re doing the customer a favor with a heavier pour of whiskey. But, by and large, we were dealing with drinks made of whiskey (rye or bourbon sometimes a mix of two bourbons, or two ryes, or a bourbon and a rye), sweet vermouth and Angostura bitters, though a few entries did opt for other varieties, such as Peychaud’s or orange bitters. A third spec asked for a Tennessee whiskey. Another threw in a couple dashes of Herbsaint. There was one recipe that used dry vermouth instead of sweet. The roads taken by the bartenders who were summoned, however, were relatively narrow. And there are so many roads to go there.” But a great Manhattan is two plus two equals five. All of the ingredients in the cocktail are great on their own. Still, Simó, waxing philosophical, allowed that, “It’s less about the rye. “This is the problem with bourbon Manhattans: not enough spice notes,” declared Teague. The majority of panelists, too, admitted to preferring a rye Manhattan. The bias of young bartenders toward rye was evident 12 or the 17 submitted recipes were made with the spicier spirit. The first decision when crafting a Manhattan is, of course, whether to use rye or bourbon. In a blind tasting, the team sampled 17 Manhattans from bartenders across America. Perhaps because of this, modern bartenders have made it a point of pride to serve a superior version of the drink. But it did frequently suffer from the indignities of bottom-shelf liquor, spoiled vermouth, absent bitters and maraschino cherries that had never seen a tree branch. Unlike other classic cocktails, the Manhattan was never completely forgotten by the drinking public during the dark ages at the end of the last century. But by the 1930s, the cocktail had settled down to the now familiar two-parts whiskey, one-part sweet vermouth, dash of bitters formula we recognize today as a Manhattan. The variety of bitters used, too, ranged wildly. Some early recipes called for equal-parts whiskey and sweet vermouth, while others asked for dry vermouth. The Manhattan was the first of the great modern cocktails of the late-19th-century golden age of mixology to make use of vermouth as an ingredient. The whiskey drink’s place in the cocktail pantheon has never been questioned since it emerged from its namesake borough in the 1870s to become a national and international favorite. ![]() If ever a cocktail was worth the bother of such an evaluation, it’s the Manhattan. Joining PUNCH in the tasting were bartenders Meaghan Dorman ( Raines Law Room, Dear Irving, The Bennett), Joaquín Simó ( Pouring Ribbons), Sother Teague ( Amor y Amargo) and this reporter. The PUNCH staff decided to find out, culling recipes for the classic cocktail from 17 leading bartenders across America and sampling them in a blind tasting. We all know there’s a Perfect Manhattan-that is, the kind that’s splits the vermouth quotient between sweet and dry varieties.
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