Imbibe! (32 page)

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
This is always considered to be a rye drink, and is described as such in that sole pre-Prohibition recipe, from
The Cocktail Book: A Sideboard Manual for Gentlemen
(numerous editions from 1900 through the 1910s; the early ones don’t have the Ward Eight, though). I say use the fresh mint instead of the crème de menthe and the orange juice instead of the orange bitters.

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
The man knows what he’s talking about, but it’s a little hard to untangle what he’s saying. I offer this as an aide to construction:

Until 1880 or so, all Cocktails, be they basic, Fancy, Improved, Evolved, or Crusta, shared a basic philosophy. Unlike Punches, which always sought to be a blend of flavors without one dominating, Cocktails were built to point up or accent the flavor of their base liquor without disguising it. With rare exception (i.e., the Japanese Cocktail), the other ingredients were measured in dashes or spoonfuls, not ounces or glassfuls. The resulting drinks were pungent, boozy, and strong. They were also delicious, but they demanded a consumer who was acclimatized to the taste of liquor and knew how to stow it away.

As the Gilded Age unfolded, cutting-edge Cocktail drinkers began to look for something lighter and more urbane than a shot of bittered booze; something more refined and Epicurean and with less savor of riverboat bars and tobacco chaws, bare-knuckle bouts and faro dens. One result was the birth of the Cocktail Punch (and no surprise that it was born in Creole New Orleans). When that was still in its infancy, though, another path suddenly suggested itself. In 1871, Bonfort’s
Wine and Liquor Circular
was already on it:

 

Vermouth had been known in America for some time. Its Italian and French makers had made several attempts to penetrate the bibulous American market. The precursor to Martini & Rossi may have tried as early as 1836, and Noilly Prat was shipping its dry vermouth to New Orleans in 1851 and San Francisco in 1853; for the rest of the decade, it turns up in liquor ads in gold-country newspapers, so somebody up in the hills must’ve been drinking it (there were lots of French miners and whores up in those hills).

In any case, as the passage from Bonfort’s suggests, it was the Italian stuff—the red, sweet kind—that was getting the traction. By the 1860s, anyway, it was pretty well established in New York and had even reached places like Galveston, Texas, and Dubuque, Iowa. If not exactly a sensation, this “vino vermouth,” as it was known, enjoyed enough of a reputation for Delmonico’s and the Metropolitan Hotel to carry it on their wine lists, the latter selling it for a respectable $3 a quart (its best cognac was only $8). It wasn’t until the 1880s, though, that it took off, first with the help of the Manhattan, then, in the 1890s, with the Martini, and then, as the new century opened, with, well, just about everything.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
This drink will work just fine with the standard red Martini & Rossi or Cinzano. If, however, you can find the Carpano Formula Antica, all of the sudden you’ve got a real drink on your hands. The tiny piece of ice is to avoid dilution; if you keep the vermouth refrigerated, you’ll be able to use more ice, and you should. Some later recipes specify bitters; depending on the vermouth you use, this may or may not be an enhancement. With the heavily aromatized Carpano, they’re superfluous. In 1884, O. H. Byron printed a version of the Vermouth Cocktail made with 1½ ounces of French vermouth, 3 dashes of Angostura bitters, and ½ teaspoon or so of gum syrup. This is a most pleasant tipple, particularly in summer. For a
Fancy Vermouth Cocktail
, as delineated in the 1887 edition of Thomas’s book, use a couple dashes of Angostura and 1 teaspoon of maraschino and replace the twist with a quarter-wheel of lemon, which can be perched on the rim or floated on top. What the hell.

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
The 1887 edition of Thomas’s book recommends that this drink be shaken and strained; again, overdilution is a concern here—which way to go depends on if you prefer a very cold drink or a concentrated one.

The Vermouth Cocktail is no doubt a fine thing, offering as it does a bold presence on the palate while still being low in impact—perhaps too low. You go to all the trouble of hitching your foot up on the rail, engaging Ed in conversation, supervising his movements as he dashes and splashes and waltzes everything around with ice, and the straining, and the twisting, and the sliding, and the paying, and what do you get for your fifteen cents? Something with no more kick to it than the little glass of sherry your maiden aunt takes when the fantods have got her. But what if you put a stick in it? Rye, gin, brandy, it doesn’t matter. Just a little something to make you feel like you’ve had a drink.

That’s one possibility. On the other hand there’s this one. The Whiskey—or Gin, or Brandy—Cocktail is no doubt a fine thing, offering as it does a smooth presence on the palate while still being high in impact—perhaps too high. You go to all the trouble of hitching your foot up on the rail and all the rest, and what do you get for your fifteen cents? Drunk, that’s what. The problem with these things is they go down so easy that you want to treat your throat to a couple or three just to show your appreciation for the fine job it’s been doing you, but next thing you know it’s next Thursday and you’re in Oakland with what feels like three black eyes and an anchor tattooed on your arm. But what if you turned the damper down a little, took that new vermouth stuff—plenty flavorful but no John L. Sullivan—and replaced some of the booze with it? Maybe you could have a drink or two without all the vaudeville.

These, then, are the two mixological theories on the origin of the Manhattan and, by extension, the Martini. The earliest recipes provide support for both. However spirits and vermouth first came together, once joined they quickly demonstrated that drinks as complex and subtle in flavor as the most baroque Regency-era Punches could be turned out over the bar as quickly as Stone Fences or Black Strap. The author of the anonymous 1898
Cocktails: How to Make Them
nailed it when he wrote, “The addition of Vermouth was the first move toward the blending of cocktails.” The Martini would ultimately be this new movement’s standard bearer, but it was the Manhattan that was the first out of the trenches.

The Manhattan Cocktail is a New York native. That much everybody agrees on. Things begin to come apart a bit in the details, though—specifically, in the universally repeated story that it was invented for a banquet hosted by Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother, at New York’s Manhattan Club to celebrate Samuel J. Tilden’s election as governor. This story, one of the most widely propagated of all drink myths, could hold up, except for the fact that the inaugural celebrations happened to coincide with Lady Winston’s delivery and christening of baby Winston—in Oxfordshire. And no, he wasn’t christened with Manhattan Cocktails.

Having sloughed off Mr. Tilden and Ms. Jerome,
⁷
must we also slough off the Manhattan Club itself? According to William F. Mulhall, bartender at the Hoffman House from 1882 until it closed in 1915, we must: “The Manhattan cocktail was invented by a man named Black, who kept a place ten doors below Houston Street on Broadway in the sixties.” There may be some truth in this: City directories from the 1870s do show one William Black operating a saloon on Bowery, although above Houston, not below. On the other hand, there’s significant evidence for the Manhattan Club’s ownership of the drink as well. For one thing, there’s the Boston bartender who stated that “the Manhattan cocktail originated in the mind of the drink mixer at the Manhattan Club’s rooms in New York.” He was interviewed in 1889, thirty-three years before Mulhall’s recollections saw print. This theory was seconded in the pages of the
New York Times
in 1902 when “Bobbie,” who wrote the “With the Clubmen” column, tossed off as a passing remark that “legend” had it “the Manhattan Club . . . first gave birth to the Manhattan Cocktail.”

The club’s 1915 official history confirms this, stating simply that “The celebrated Manhattan cocktail was inaugurated at the club.” Unfortunately, none of the multitudinous pre-Prohibition references to the Manhattan that I’ve examined indicate what circumstances attended its inauguration. There is, however, the rumor Carol Truax printed in the April 1963 issue of
Gourmet
, to the effect that the drink was invented by “some anonymous genius” during August Belmont’s presidency of the club, which ran from 1874 to 1879. Since her father had been president of the club himself, in the 1890s, this may have some weight. But it may have even predated Belmont’s presidency. Consider this little item from the
Galveston Daily News
:

 

That was published in September 1873. Now, there’s no guarantee that this Manhattan Club invention is the drink we all know and love, but there’s nothing here to say it isn’t. If so, it’s extraordinarily early for a Cocktail mixed with vermouth; it would be almost a decade before such things reached general acceptance.

By the mid-1880s, anyway, the Manhattan was common property. Some indications of its progress: On September 5, 1882, the Manhattan made its first appearance in print, in the pages of the
Olean (NY) Democrat
: “It is but a short time ago that a mixture of whiskey, vermouth and bitters came into vogue,” notes the paper’s “New York Letter.” “It went under various names—Manhattan cocktail, Turf Club cocktail, and Jockey Club cocktail. Bartenders at first were sorely puzzled what was wanted when it was demanded. But now they are fully cognizant of its various aliases and no difficulty is encountered.” By 1884, the Manhattan had made its way into the bartender’s guides. In 1885, the
New Orleans Times-Democrat
pronounced it “a juicy and delicious compound” while the
Brooklyn Eagle
had a “solitary, discontented and rocky specimen” of the New York bachelor walking into a swank Broadway restaurant at breakfast time and addressing the waiter with considerable irritation: “Stand still, can’t you? You make a man’s head swim bobbing around so. What I want is a Manhattan cocktail with absinthe, frozen [i.e., with shaved ice in the glass].” The Ranch saloon in Albuquerque was proudly offering it to all and sundry in 1886, with a splash of Mumm’s champagne to boot. The first recipe for a Dry Manhattan turned up in 1891, in the second edition of O. H. Byron’s
Modern Bartender’s Guide
. The Cleveland
Leader
dubbed it the “seductive and unconquerable Manhattan Cocktail” in 1892. In the 1894 obituary of Gen. Jubal Early, the most unreconstructed of Confederate generals, it was noted that in recent years “his headquarters for ordinary friends were at the Norvall-Arlington saloon at Lynchburg [Virginia], where his favorite tipple was a Manhattan Cocktail.” Since that’s like Pat Robertson listening to Boy George, it’s a good place to leave things.

Rather than provide a single recipe, I’ve provided three, each illustrating a different school of Manhattanistics.