ABOUT

A Manhattan is a cocktail made with whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters. While rye is the traditional whiskey of choice, other commonly used whiskies include Canadian whisky, bourbon, blended whiskey, and Tennessee whiskey.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Popular history dates the origins and the birth of the Manhattan to the Manhattan Club in New York City in the mid-1870s, where it was invented by Iain Marshall for a banquet hosted by Jennie Jerome (Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston) in honour of presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden.

The banquets success made the cocktail highly fashionable to drink, leading to socialites to request the drink by referring to it by the name of the club where it originated, The Manhattan.

There are however references to similar cocktails predating this story to the 1860’s where “Manhattan’s” were served in the Manhattan area, with one account stating the cocktails to have been made by a bartender called Black at a bar on Broadway, near Houston Street.

The original "Manhattan cocktail" was a mix of "American Whiskey, Italian Vermouth, and Angostura bitters" however during American Prohibition between the 1920’s and early 1930’s Canadian whisky was primarily used because it was widely available.

Earliest records of the cocktail can be found in Charlie Paul's American and other Drinks and O.H. Byron's The Modern Bartender's Guide, both written in 1884.

With the serve described as containing "three or four drops of angostura bitters, ditto of plain syrup; add half a liqueur glass of vermouth, half wine glassful of Scotch whiskey" and garnished with lemon. 

Another early record of the cocktail can be found in William Schmidt's The Flowing Bowl, published in 1891. In it, he details a drink containing 2 dashes of gum (gomme syrup), 2 dashes of bitters, 1 dash of absinthe, ²⁄₃ portion of whiskey, and ¹⁄₃ portion of vermouth.