The Perfect Manhattan Cocktail

TL;DR: You make the perfect Manhattan Cocktail by stirring Whisky, Vermouth and Angostura Bitters with ice cubes. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Ingredients

  • 5 cl whisky (Rye Whisky is preferred, but not required. any canadian, bourbon, blended or Tennessee)
  • 2 cl sweet Vermouth (pick the red)
  • 1 dash of Angostura Bitters
  • 1 Cocktail cherry/maraschino berry

How To Mix

  1. Add whisky, Vermouth and Angostura to a mixing glass.
  2. Thoroughly stir until really, really cold.
  3. Pour through a strainer into a nice, chilled cocktail glass.
  4. Or serve it on the rocks in a rocks glass for a more masculine effect.
  5. Garnish with a beautiful, red cocktail cherry/maraschino berry – don’t remove the stem!
  6. Enjoy!

Video Guide

A Brief Background on the Manhattan Cocktail

Like all popular things, the Manhattan’s history is also a bit blurry with plenty of people claiming to have invented this classic. Credit is commonly given to Dr. Iain Marshall from the Manhattan Club (NY), who is said to have invented it sometimes in the 1870’s.

Others claim that it may have been invented some 10 years earlier, in the 1860′, in a Broadway bar.

The first written record seems however to be around the Prohibition, where we find a reference to a likely candidate in the cocktail book Shake ‘Em Up! (1930).

The Manhattan Cocktail has lots of traditions tied to it. Go to Wikipedias article to learn more.