Celebrating the Queen of Cocktails . . . the Manhattan!

 .

Today is the 149th anniversary of the invention of the Manhattan.  It was invented at the Manhattan Club in (of course) New York City at a gala celebration in honor of Samuel Jones Tilden, who had just been elected governor. To make the history even more glittery, the event was held in the home of Jennie Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill. Some even say the drink was made specifically for her.

And already I've told more lies than you could count after a third drink. All the above was once documented as being true--and every word of it has since been disproved by cold, solid scholarship.

But what the heck. When the truth becomes legend... print the legend.

So the Manhattan is 149 years old this evening. 

If you look up the earliest printed recipes for this noble drink, you'll find that in keeping with the taste for sticky-sweet drinks that was prevalent at the time, they called for equal portions of sweet vermouth and rye or even twice more vermouth than rye. Don't do that. 

Even today, many will tell you that the proportions should be 2-1-2, the same as the borough of Manhattan's area code--two parts rye, one part sweet vermouth, two dashes of bitters. That's close but why settle for close? Here's the taste-tested recipe for the Queen of Cocktails:

The Manhattan

3 ounces rye

1 ounce sweet vermouth

1 or 2 dashes of bitters, depending on your preference

1 spiced cherry for garnish

Unlike the Martini, there's wiggle room here. I prefer Angostura bitters, where Marianne favors cherry bitters. Orange bitters are also good as are--wait for it!--Aztec chocolate bitters. It's all a matter of taste. 

Oh, and spiced cherries are far, far superior to those awful candied things you buy by the jar. But nobody's going to give you a hard time if they're what you have on hand.

À votre santé, la Reine de la Nuit!

*