How to Make Twists on a Classic

Let’s begin with defining the drink itself before we start making tweaks. The truth about Manhattans is that the specifics are everything. You’ll make a great Manhattan and think, “Ok! That’s my go-to Manhattan vermouth,” but then you try that same vermouth with a different whiskey and it’s terrible. Same with whiskies for a different vermouth. We spent months trying Manhattan combinations—the same rye across six vermouths, the same vermouth across six ryes, etc., etc., etc.—and what he consistently found was that it’s not about any one special bottle of whiskey or vermouth, but about how each two unique products work together. So after all of that tinkering and myriad of combinations, we didn’t emerge with one perfect Manhattan, but instead a series of different Manhattans that can suit your tastes or mood. Try each recipe below and tell us which one is your favorite.

The Opulent Manhattan

For this cocktail and the additional recipes below, add ingredients to mixing glass, stir on ice for 15 seconds (small ice) to 30 seconds (bigger ice). Strain into stemmed cocktail glass and garnish with a quality cocktail cherry.

The Dark Manhattan

The Eccentric Manhattan

This certainly isn’t the most popular of Manhattan variations, despite being one of the few scotch cocktails people can name offhand. However, choose the right scotch and vermouth, though, and you’ll find that the Rob Roy is a delightful little cocktail and well worth drinking. When you use a mild blended scotch, we would agree that it is merely a facsimile of the Manhattan. But harness a touch of Scotland’s inimitable peat, and the Rob Roy really steps into its own, the vermouth offering sweetness to the scotch’s smoke, their interplay both delicious and unique.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for about 15 seconds for small ice or 25 seconds for big ice. Strain into a coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry.

The classic Manhattan has numerous variations on its mix of rye, vermouth, and bitters. And with each one, there’s a new name, paying homage to the neighborhood or borough where it was created. The New Orleans version was created in the city’s French Quarter—or Vieux Carré—where there’s the addition of Benedictine and Cognac.

Stir for 20 to 30 solid seconds. Strain into cocktail glass, garnish with a lemon peel.

Back in the early 1900s, when dry cocktails were en vogue in New York City, because of the popularity of newly available French “dry” vermouth, bartenders were being asked to swap out Italian “sweet” vermouth by patrons. But dry versions of the Manhattan weren’t that warmly received when people actually tried them, so a solution was to split the measure so it was half Italian and half French. Eventually, this earned the moniker Perfect Manhattan, though it’s hard to argue that this variation is actually more perfect than the original cocktail.

Still—there’s a place for the Perfect Manhattan. It’s a regular Manhattan that preserves the strength but has less sweetness, with part of the voluptuous fruit and florals of the Italian vermouth replaced with a more austere, hay-like herbaceousness from the French, a way to have the whiskey speak a little louder.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass, add ice, and stir for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain off ice into a cocktail, coupe, or Martini glass, and garnish with a cocktail cherry.

Legendary Boston bar Drink was special because it was a dealer’s choice bar. There was no menu and no visible bottles behind the bar, so every cocktail that ended up before someone was the product of a conversation about likes, dislikes, flavors, and vibes. Despite not having a menu, they felt like they needed a house cocktail, so bar manager John Gertsen invented the Fort Point. It’s a play on a Manhattan, and like the classics Brooklyn and Vieux Carre, and the neo-classics Red Hook and Greenpoint, it is named after the neighborhood in which it was invented. It is simple and protean, elegant and robust, and is indeed so delicious it’s a wonder it wasn’t invented somewhere else first, but nonetheless, a Fort Point: rye whiskey and bittersweet vermouth Punt e Mes, with a small kiss of the herbal French liqueur Bénédictine, stirred, strained up with a cherry on the side.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe, and garnish with a cocktail cherry, on the side.

The Black Manhattan is like a Manhattan, but more so. It takes the energy of a normal Manhattan cocktail—no one’s idea of a shrinking violet, I think you’d agree—and supercharges it. If the standard Manhattan is a song played on a piano, the Black Manhattan is that same song on a pipe organ—big, booming chords of flavor, filling every available space.

Most Manhattan variations follow a simple template: You take the standard recipe for the Manhattan (2 oz. whiskey, 1 oz. sweet vermouth, 2 dashes bitters), and reduce the vermouth by half and accent it with a small pour of some other liqueur. There are lots of these: Use Cynar and it’s a Little Italy; Maraschino and it’s a Red Hook; Benedictine for a Fort Point; you can go on and on. The Black Manhattan does not follow this rule, because when Todd Smith thought up the cocktail in 2005, the rule hadn’t been invented yet. What this means for the Black Manhattan is not only that it is a Manhattan in which the sweet vermouth is not reduced but fully supplanted with an ounce of the Italian bittersweet liqueur, Averna (the aforementioned rule-breaking) but also, it means that the online recipes are kinda all over the place, because the conception of a Manhattan in 2005 was different to what it is today. Now, Averna doesn’t taste like it would be interchangeable with sweet vermouth, but the Black Manhattan works like it is. It tastes like the original, just darker and fuller, with more cocoa and coffee and cola notes. Like a Manhattan, but more so.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for 10 to 15 seconds (on small ice) or 20 to 30 seconds (on big ice). Strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with a cherry.

The Greenpoint is an excellent neo-classic riff on a Manhattan that was invented at Milk & Honey in New York, and comprises the classic build of Manhattan—rye, sweet vermouth, and bitters—into which has been spliced the inimitable French herbal liqueur, Yellow Chartreuse. The Chartreuse charms the cocktail, giving it a bright herbaceousness and seductive spice, with the liqueur’s full battery of gifts echoing into a long, ambrosial finish.

Add all the ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for about 10 to 15 seconds (if using small ice) or about 20 to 30 seconds (if using big ice). Take heed: This drink benefits from a slight bit more dilution than a standard Manhattan. Once perfect, strain off the ice into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon peel.

The Fall Back, created by legendary late bartender Sasha Petraske, starts with rye whiskey, which is then split (like the cocktail’s closest relative, the Vieux Carré) with an equal pour of brandy, in this case Apple Brandy. Sweet vermouth provides a lush red-fruit component. The bittersweet Italian liqueur Amaro Nonino provides herbaceous orange notes, and it’s given both brightness and a surprising amount of charm from a couple dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters. What all of this yields is a Manhattan that is vividly autumnal. It’s round and full, bursting with spiced apple characteristics from the combination of the Peychaud’s and Apple Brandy. Amaro Nonino is relatively mild in terms of herbaceousness and bitterness and while both are present, it mostly brings orange complexity and a textured canvas for the cocktail’s other talents. It might be the perfect cocktail for fall, but it’s worth drinking at any time of the year.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice. Stir on ice for 20 to 30 seconds, and strain either on a big cube in a rocks glass or up in a coupe. Garnish with an orange peel.

In the world of Manhattan variations, the Brooklyn is one of the best. The problem is that a key ingredient to make an authentic Brooklyn cocktail, Amer Picon, is illegal in the United States. So despite this drink being perhaps better than its older brother, the Manhattan, you’re much less likely to encounter it in the wild. However we tinkered endlessly to a substitute for this French liqueur and has found one in using Amaro Ramozzotti and a couple dashes of orange bitters to go with the rye whiskey, dry vermouth, and maraschino liqueur.

Add all ingredients to a chilled mixing glass. Add ice and stir briskly for 10 seconds (if using small ice) to 25 seconds (if using big ice). Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Of all the Manhattan’s children—and there are many—the Harvard Cocktail is perhaps the most bizarre.

The Harvard Cocktail is equal parts vermouth and spirit and starts with a pretty basic substitution of brandy for whiskey. This is simple enough, and some famous and talented bartenders just leave it at that. Doing so, however, ignores a perhaps inconvenient fact but one that makes the Harvard Cocktail so strange, and ultimately so interesting: The drink’s inventor instructs to stir, strain into a cocktail glass, and “fill up with seltzer.” 

Fill up with seltzer! A Brandy Manhattan topped with soda water? If you don’t do a lot of cocktail drinking, you might not know that this is essentially insane. You can have a highball (spirit and soda) and you can have a vermouth and soda, but a Manhattan with seltzer is unheard of. It’s like adding chocolate sauce to a fish taco. They’re all good flavors but… would something like that work? We think it does. The seltzer leavens it, enlivens it, puts room between the flavors where the room is needed most, and turns a derivative and mediocre drink into a fascinating and bizarre one. It’s the Manhattan’s strangest child, the one with an artistic temperament and mismatched socks, but one that deserves love all the same.

Add all ingredients except for soda to a mixing glass. Add ice and stir for 15 to 20 seconds and strain into a coupe. Add soda water and garnish with the oils from a lemon peel.

The Little Italy is a Manhattan variation created by Audrey Saunders in 2005 and put on the opening menu of her groundbreaking NYC cocktail bar, Pegu Club. Just like a Manhattan, it’s rye whiskey and sweet vermouth, but where a Manhattan would have a couple dashes of aromatic cocktail bitters, the Little Italy instead uses some Cynar.

This was an aggressive choice. It’s feels normal to the point pedestrian today, but in 2005, when bitterness was less accepted in the drinking culture, it was a shot across the bow. If the Vieux Carre is a Manhattan with southern charm, the Little Italy is a Manhattan with New York “charm,” one that bangs its palm on the hood of your car and screams, “hey I’m walkin’ here!” The bright fragrant baking spice from Angostura Bitters is replaced with the deep earth of the Cynar whose bitterness brings a constant low hum, like engine noise on an airplane. In the world of Manhattan variations, it’s a serious choice, herbaceous, bitter, boozy and a worthy choice after a big meal on a cold night. 

Add ingredients to a mixing glass, stir on ice for 10 to 20 seconds and strain up into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry or two.