Manhattan Cocktail , a mixture of American whisky, bitters, and vermouth, is believed to be the first “modern” cocktail, in that it added an aromatized, fortified wine to the classic Whisky Cocktail, thus appreciably reducing the amount of alcohol in it without diminishing its concentration of flavor or thinning its silky texture. See Cock-Tail and Old-Fashioned Cocktail. The Manhattan’s creation in the 1870s or early 1880s was something of a watershed moment in bartending, as it was the progenitor of other classic drinks relying on the platform of spirits, vermouth, and bitters, notably the Martini, Rob Roy, Brooklyn, and a host of other spinoffs. See Brooklyn Cocktail; Martini; and Rob Roy. “Make no mistake about it,” Lucius Beebe wrote in 1946, “the Manhattan was the archetypal short mixed drink and blazed a trail for all others to follow.” To Gary Regan, the Manhattan’s greatest modern champion, it was “the drink that changed the face of cocktails.” See Beebe, Lucius; and Regan, Gary.
The Manhattan was likely invented in its namesake borough of New York City, with the most commonly known origin story pacing it at the Manhattan Club, a prestigious men’s club with strongly Democratic leanings. Modern folklore holds that the circumstances were roughly these, first printed in 1945 by barman-columnist Patrick Murphy, who got them from veteran bar-industry journalist Ed Gibbs and his “research department” (one is entitled to wonder): the drink was invented “on a memorable December 29, 1874 evening at the Manhattan Club,” at which “a testimonial dinner was held in honor of Samuel J. Tilden… . Official notes on the banquet alluded to declare that the dinner was preceded by a drink made of ‘American Whisky, Italian Vermouth and Angostura Bitters.’ It proved so popular that club members asked for it again and again, hence [it] became known as the Manhattan Cocktail.” Once the story was picked up by Walter Winchell’s popular column in 1950—now with the added flourish that the Manhattan Club was formerly the home of Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother—it took root so deeply that it has proved impossible to dislodge. What’s more, over the years Ms. Jerome’s role has been expanded form first being present at the creation to being its inspiration.
The story, however, is simply not true. While multiple news reports confirm there was in fact a reception honoring Tilden at the Manhattan Club on that date, no mention of the drink’s debut, or Ms. Jerome’s role in its creation, is found within these stories. Furthermore, in 1874, the club was located in the old Benkard mansion on Fifth Avenue, not the old Jerome mansion on Madison Square, which it wouldn’t occupy until 1899. Finally, as David Wondrich has pointed out, Ms. Jerome was not in New York at the time of the reception, as she had given birth to her Mr. Churchill less than a month before, in Oxfordshire, England.
But while that particular story is false, that does not mean that the cocktail wasn’t created at the Manhattan Club. Indeed, the club’s official history claimed ownership, and that was the most popular theory at the time. In 1889, a “Boston bartender” went on record to the effect that “the Manhattan cocktail originated in the mind of the drink mixer at the Manhattan Club’s rooms in New York.” The New York Sun, a newspaper that paid unusual attention to matters mixological, concurred, writing in 1891 that “the famous Manhattan cocktail was invented at the club.” See rock and rye. Finally, in 1902, the With the Clubmen column in the New York Times succinctly stated that, according to “legend,” “the Manhattan Club … first gave birth to the Manhattan Cocktail.” There were, and are, numerous competing stories, most of them either easily disproved or slenderly documented and impossible to prove. Perhaps the most viable of them is found in a 1922 article penned by William F. Mulhall, who in the 1880s had been head barkeeper at the legendary Hoffman House, an impeccable credential for one writing about the drinks of the time. See Hoffman House. He stated that “the Manhattan cocktail was invented by a man named Black, who kept a place ten doors below Houston Street on Broadway,” back in the 1860s.
While alone in its claim that Black was the drink’s inventor, Mulhall’s story is plausible. Indeed, Wondrich has located an 1881 sale notice in the New York Journal for “the popular lunch and sample room [i.e., bar] formerly owned and conducted by George Black, known as the Manhattan Inn, No. 493 Broadway” (Black had died earlier that year). While the address was indeed on Broadway, it was not exactly “ten doors below Houston Street,” but it was close enough, especially when recalled after forty-one years.
Irrespective of where the drink was invented, the earliest known reference to the Manhattan cocktail is found in an 1882 Gotham Gossip column that was syndicated among several small-town American newspapers. It noted that “it is but a short time ago that a mixture of whisky, vermouth and bitters came into vogue. 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.” Further praise for the Manhattan came the following year in the Boston Herald, which called the drink “about as good as anything that can be manufactured.” And, in 1884, the Manhattan appeared in not one but three cocktail books, in O. H. Byron’s Modern Bartenders’ Guide, George Winters’s How to Mix Drinks, and J. W. Gibson’s Scientific Bar-Keeping. By the end of the decade, it had spread to Vienna and London and Monte Carlo, and from there to the world. See Ciro’s.
While today the standard ratio of whisky to vermouth in the drink tends to be 2:1, in recipes found in these and other books of the 1880s and 1890s, the ratio was often 1:1, or in some cases 1:2, in favor of vermouth. As to the question of whether rye or bourbon was found in the “original” Manhattan, you’ll find references to both. The Boston Herald described the drink as “the ordinary vermouth cocktail with a foundation of first-rate Bourbon whiskey.” Harry Johnson, however, and the editor of the posthumous 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide called for rye. See Johnson, Harry; and Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”. As to the garnish, a lemon peel was used in the earliest known recipes, with the now-standard cherry not appearing until 1891. See maraschino cherries.
The Manhattan fell on hard times in the 1960s, when straight whisky was replaced by blended and drinks of its ilk came to be served on the rocks, rather than strained into a cocktail glass, thus destroying the silky texture that forms a considerable part of their appeal. Worse, untrained bartenders, reasoning that the Manhattan was like its cousin the Martini, took to skimping on the vermouth, adding only a tiny splash. While gin is light enough to be transformed by such a splash, whisky is not, and the resulting drink managed to spoil the whisky without turning it into a cocktail. The bartender’s solution was to add a splash of the unnatural syrup from the maraschino cherry jar. This left the drink ripe for rediscovery, and it was perhaps the first drink that the twenty-first-century cocktail renaissance hauled forth from the mire and refurbished.
Recipe: Stir well with cracked ice 60 ml straight rye or bourbon whisky (preferably bonded), 30 ml Italian red vermouth, and 2–3 dashes Angostura bitters. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and twist lemon peel over the top. Add a cherry if desired.
“A Cherry in Your Cocktail.” Kansas City Times, March 15, 1891, 16.
“Gotham Gossip.” Lyndon (KS) Leader, August 31, 1882, 4.
Greene, Philip. The Manhattan. New York: Sterling Epicure, 2016.
“Howard’s Letter.” Boston Sunday Herald, December 9, 1883, 13.
Lait, Jack. “Walter Winchell on Broadway.” Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, August 19, 1950, 7.
Mulhall, William F. “The Golden Age of Booze.” In Valentine’s Manual of Old New York, ed. Henry Collins Brown, 126–137. New York: Valentine’s, 1922.
Wondrich, David, Imbibe!, 2nd ed. New York: Perigee, 2015.
By: Philip Greene
The barroom at the Manhattan Club when it was in the Jerome Mansion on Madison Square, New York City, ca. 1901. Source: Library of Congress.