The Spirits #23: The Reverse Manhattan

~ Inside Out ~ Was Not Born Just Yesterday ~ Rotten Apple to the Core ~ We Float ~

~ THE REVERSE MANHATTAN ~

50ml Italian vermouth
25ml bourbon or rye
Dash Angostura bitters

Freeze your glassware. Fill a mixing vessel with ice. Add the liquids and stir patiently. Strain into the cold cocktail glass and garnish with a length of orange peel or a maraschino cherry if you happen to have one.

Some Reverse Manhattan Notes:

1) Reverse because, ordinarily, the proportions would be 50ml bourbon, 25ml Italian vermouth, dash of bitters. But you knew that, right?

2) While trying to further reinvent this wheel, I experimented with an Inside-Out Manhattan: 25ml Angostura bitters, 25ml bourbon, 25ml Italian vermouth. It really wasn’t bad! Please do make but at your own risk.

3) I’ve seen this referred to as a ‘Beretto da Notte’ too - which is Italian for nightcap. The extra sweetness and lower alcohol make for a pleasant after-dinner drink.

4) The (original) Manhattan is a fine cocktail for experimenting with. Try adding 10ml of any interesting liqueur you fancy. Cherry brandy, Grand Marnier, Bénédictine, all good. Switch the Italian vermouth for an amaro like Cynar or Averna (for a Black Manhattan). If you sub the bourbon for Scotch, you have a Rob Roy; if you sub it for brandy you have a Harvard; and if you sub it for dark rum, well I’m not sure what that one’s called but it’s extremely nice.

BUT HOLD ON. Some NEW YORK MUSIC … and sure you can sit up at the bar.

You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations for a cabinet here - and this here is the full archive of weekly specials. Do please share the Spirits with anyone who might like it - and feel free to tag me with your creations on Instagram ou même Twitter!

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FOUR MANHATTANS: A MULTIMEDIA JOURNEY.

MANHATTAN #1
The Boy here does make an excellent Manhattan

From ‘Bart the Murderer’ (The Simpsons Season 3, episode 4).

Not only does Bart learn how to make a Manhattan during his brief employment as a barman by Fat Tony’s gang…

He comes up with the goods under pressure:

🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃

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MANHATTAN #2
Bartender I’d like a Manhattan please

From Tom Waits and Bette Midler, ‘I Never Talk to Strangers’

And here’s the song. In the absence of footage of Tom and Bette, there’s a montage of images from The Apartment but they’re kind of charming in context.

🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃

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MANHATTAN #3
Who’s got some vermouth?

As prepared by Marilyn Monroe, on a train, in Some Like it Hot

Such resourcefulness!

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MANHATTAN #4
A shade of oblivion

From my own book, The Spirits

"Bartender, I'd like a Manhattan, please", coos Bette Midler at the beginning of the old Tom Waits song I Never Talk to Strangers. Once the piano has bluesed up the scene, a sax squawks and Waits announces his presence, making it clear that this is a duet. “Aaaargghghghghmmmm,” he says. Or perhaps it’s more of a “Hi…rgghrgh...umm.” At any rate, you get the picture: downtown bar, grizzled barfly spots classy lady at ten o’clock, sidles up, clears his not inconsiderable throat and tries his luck: “Stop me if you’ve heard this one…”

I’m not sure what Waits is drinking, probably Scotch and razorblades. (“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy,” he once explained to a chat show host). But we can be fairly certain that it is a Manhattan that fuels Bette Midler’s worldly put-downs. “Now tell me do you really think I’d fall for that old lie?” she teases. “I was not born just yesterday.”

And yet her choice of drink gives her away. Wow, a Manhattan. That’s a serious drink. Waits clearly detects that she’s seeking a shade of oblivion with which he is familiar. “You’re bitter ‘cos he left you, that’s why you’re drinking in this bar”, he surmises. It turns out they know each other all too well. And so they fall in love, with the romance foreshadowed by the cocktail order – hard, sweet, bitter.

The Manhattan is generally agreed to be the very first cocktail made with vermouth, which was a novel ingredient in American bars in the late 19th century – a bit like liquid nitrogen is today, perhaps. It has spawned numerous variations (not least the Martini) and it has barely slipped off cocktail menus since, which is hardly surprising because it is delicious. While it is the vermouth and whiskey that forms the drama of the drink, it is the bitters that sew it all together – it’s worth tasting without to see what a difference a little dash makes.

I wonder, in a contemporary version of I Never Talk to Strangers, what would the Bette Midler character have ordered? Perhaps a glass of Pinot Grigio? And if she had, would she have ended up wandering into the night with Tom Waits? Then again, while people often think of the Manhattan as a masculine, after-dark, aftershave-y sort of drink, one that goes well with smoke, steak and Miles Davis, you could make a good claim for it as the original “girly drink”. There is a persistent rumour that it was actually invented by Winston Churchill’s mother in the 1870s. Then there's that wonderful scene in Some Like It Hot, where Marilyn Monroe fixes a round of Manhattans for an entire female orchestra on a train after lights out. Her resourcefulness when faced with a bottle of bourbon is impressive: “Who’s got some vermouth?”; “Run down to the pantry car and get some ice would ya?” I suppose that’s why everyone fell in love with her.

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PLAYLIST

A city-themed list. New York! Where else.

Please note: if you follow this playlist it will automatically refresh each week - so make the most of it while you can! You can find a masterlist of all songs featured so far here.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Lucy Kellaway asks: what is the point in schools? (FT)

Sophie McBain on the melancholia pandemic (New Statesman)

Johanna on Jordan Peterson (also New Statesman)

Patrick Freyne on Harry and Meghan and the Windsors (Irish Times)

WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

The lockdown generation: 16 children on spending a year at home. I loved working on this one. (Observer)

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SHOPPING LIST

Light rum, fresh mint, sugar, lime, fizzy water.

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿