Bracing and spirit-forward, it sets the peppery bite of rye whiskey against the dark, herbal sweetness of sweet vermouth, with a couple of dashes of aromatic bitters lifting and knitting the two together. Stirred until cold and silky and served up with a brandied cherry, it drinks smooth but serious — the rye leads, the vermouth rounds off its edges, and the cherry leaves a last note of dark fruit.
Garnish: Brandied Cherry
Stirred · Coupe · Up
add
Add the rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters to a mixing glass filled with ice.
stir
Stir until well chilled and properly diluted, about 30 seconds.
strain
Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, served up.
garnish
Garnish with a brandied cherry.
The drink took shape in New York in the early 1880s, and when the first known recipes reached print in 1884, none of them credited anyone with inventing it. The most repeated tale has a bartender called Iain Marshall mixing it at the Manhattan Club for a banquet hosted by Lady Randolph Churchill — a story historians now dismiss as fiction, since she was pregnant and living in France when it supposedly happened — while a rival claim gives it to a bartender named Black, working in the 1860s at a Broadway bar close to Houston Street. With no single creator to its name, it went on to become the archetypal whiskey cocktail and one of the bar's great templates, and the IBA carries it on its official list.