THE MANHATTAN
In its roughly 150-year lifespan, the
Manhattan has certainly proven its mettle. Said to have appeared in print for the first time in 1882, the rye whiskey-based bracer became enshrined in cocktail history in 1948, when David A. Embury listed it as one of six basic drinks in his hugely influential volume, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.
Much like the Martini, the Daiquiri and other similar benchmarks, it makes the most of minimal ingredients and a foolproof method – the key, no doubt, to an appeal that cuts across cultures and generations. It has also become something of a cocktail category in its own right, open to all manner of interpretation and reinvention.
Dominique Lentz, the co-owner of La Buvette in Adelaide, puts an effortless Gallic twist on the timeless tipple by swapping rye whisky for Cognac, keeping the sweet vermouth and mixing in orange liqueur. “Cognac makes it a smoother, rather more sophisticated cocktail,” he says, “with the liqueur adding depth and a citrusy element.”
The end result lands somewhere between the original Manhattan, a Sidecar and its precursor, the Brandy Crusta: complex, bright and very bewitching.