Rye whiskey stirred with sweet vermouth and aromatic bitters, served up in a chilled coupe with a cherry
Origin: New York City, USA
From the journey of Rye.
The Manhattan is two parts rye whiskey to one of sweet red vermouth, with a dash or two of aromatic bitters, stirred over ice and strained into a chilled glass with a cherry. It is one of the oldest cocktails to call for vermouth, and a family of drinks descends from it, including the Rob Roy, made with Scotch. Rye is the original spirit. American rye whiskey must by federal rule be distilled from a mash of at least 51 per cent rye, and it was the whiskey of the eastern seaboard long before bourbon. Farmers in Pennsylvania and Maryland distilled their rye into whiskey because a barrel of spirit was far easier to carry over the mountains to market than a wagonload of grain; George Washington's distillery at Mount Vernon produced nearly 11,000 gallons in 1799, one of the largest outputs in America, from a mash of about 60 per cent rye, 35 per cent corn, and 5 per cent malted barley. The spicy, dry edge of rye is what holds its own against the sweetness of the vermouth. The Manhattan's origin comes with a famous story, and the story is false. It holds that the drink was invented at a banquet given at the Manhattan Club in New York by Jennie Jerome, the American mother of Winston Churchill, to celebrate Samuel J. Tilden's election as governor of New York. The banquet was held on 29 December 1874. Winston Churchill had been born at Blenheim Palace on 30 November and was christened there on 27 December, and his mother was in England. What the record does show is the drink in print by 1882, and in the bartenders' manuals of the later 1880s, by which time it was established in New York bars. Prohibition all but ended American rye whiskey. When the distilleries of Pennsylvania and Maryland closed in 1920, few reopened after repeal in 1933, and the Manhattan was made for decades with bourbon or Canadian whisky instead. The revival of classic cocktails in the early twenty-first century brought rye back, and the Manhattan with it.
Vermouth is a wine, and once opened it should be kept in the refrigerator and used within a month or so; stale vermouth is the commonest reason a Manhattan disappoints. A Perfect Manhattan splits the vermouth equally between sweet and dry. A Rob Roy replaces the rye with Scotch whisky. Bourbon makes a softer, sweeter Manhattan and is a common modern substitution; rye gives the drier and spicier original.
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