All roads lead to Manhat

The Manhattan is my ur-drink. If the city of Manhattan is a shadow of Amber, Viriconium, and Rome, then its namesake potation is surely a reflection of Ambrosia, Manna, and the she-wolf's nourishing milk. While an ideal is just a concept, its reflection is a single now plucked from the resonance of infinitude.

Manhattan #1

2 oz Old Overholt rye

1 oz Carpano Antica

2 dashes Angostura

Luxardo cherry

My first home build, and nothing to turn up your nose at. There is a beautiful mind meld between these three specific bottles that Herbert calls The "Peanut & Vanilla" Effect. I might say I get a taste of pumpernickel on the finish, or a sweet and savory Payday bar tilted ever so slightly toward caraway. Herbert calls it "nougat." I call it "nougat" too but, but only because it tastes like that word sounds. The flavor is right, but the build is too soft and thin with the 80-proof whiskey.

Manhattan #2

2 oz Rittenhouse rye

1 oz Carpano Antica

2 dashes Angostura

Stir till your fingers get cold

Luxardo cherry

This was my go-to for years and years. Everybody on earth will recommend Rittenhouse for this and every other purpose. And it is indeed good. I never thought twice about it. But I did miss that Old Overholt nougat.

Manhattan #3

2 oz Old Overholt Cask Strength 11 year old rye

1 oz Carpano Antica

2 dashes Angostura

50s stir

Luxardo cherry

Lords of Light! It's incredible, sublime! Every sip offers a new progression of flavors. I taste the leather, the peanut brittle, a hint of cherry. As it warms, that distinctive OO finish comes to the fore. If you told Manhattan #1 to grow a backbone, and it collected life lessons for a decade, you'd get Manhattan #3. If you plied Willy Wonka with these, and he went on a drunken invention binge, perhaps you'd get that pumpernickel candy bar you've been craving.

I got very tipsy, and Herbert and I had a spat. Why have I been wasting myself on Rittenhouse for so long?

Manhattan #4

2 oz Old Overholt 114

1 oz Carpano Antica

2 dashes Angostura

60s stir

Luxardo cherry

I did not love this. So hot with the 114, and fruitier and flatter overall than #3. Less of my ideal nougat flavor, although it returns as the drink warms. Then it comes on strong, but its louche bedfellow elbows it aside and breathes right in my face with a sour, hot wind. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em—maybe if I eat a pickle, this unwelcome fellow will go away. Ah yes, problem solved, but I wanted a Manhattan, not a pickle.

Manhattan #5

2 oz Old Overholt Cask Strength 11 year old rye

1 oz Carpano Antica

2 dashes Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas Decanter bitters

60s stir

Luxardo cherry

Delicious, but I think not as good as #3. Softer and more integrated than that one, and a touch sweeter, with a drying, dusty finish like a tinge of regret. This is somebody's ideal girl, but not mine.

Manhattan #6

2 oz Old Overholt 11 year cask strength

1 oz Carpano Antica

1 dash Angostura

1 dash Miracle Mile Toasted Pecan bitters

45s stir

Luxardo cherry garnish

The toasted pecan bitters are delightful on the nose, but this is flatter than #3 and reads too dry overall. If #3 is a lovingly oiled boot, this is a cracked leather armchair.

Manhattan #7

2 oz Old Overholt 11 year cask strength

1 oz Carpano Antica

0.5 tsp gum demerara syrup (Liber and Co)

1 dash Angostura

2 dashes Miracle Mile Candy Cap bitters

1 dash (scant) Regan's orange bitters

45s stir

Luxardo cherry garnish

The gum really does something here. Slippery when wet, like drinking an oyster. Strong maple on the nose and in the aftertaste from the candy cap, and too sweet overall. I've lost the nougat somewhere in the forest. About three quarters of the way through, I add a drop of saline, and it busts everything open. It's like I stepped on a sea star and a mess of technicolor guts spilled out.

The candy cap clobbered the nougat, the salt just made it more of an asshole, and it hired a slippery bastard of a sweet-talking lawyer in the gum syrup.

When is a dirty martini not dirty, and other Zen koans

After the Tuxedo led me to the Maturin, I fixed my eye on the Tuxedo No. 2.

In full faith her virtue I pursued, no matter how worn the track or dark the alley, her fleet foot a flickering beacon to my thirst. No place for a naif. And yet, even the worm may turn. Good years are lost, but good may come again. Here, now, here is good. The pure, bittersweet punch of love...or is it olive? High pitched, and clear-toned, not stuck in the gutter like a dirty martini, nor either a dirty old man.

We are still in Spain, and I have Matador on the tongue. Martini...Maturin...Matador. But then again, we have stumbled upon a reversal of fortune. The good sort, unexpected but welcome. And is there any writer who sings the Spanish soul, and the reversals it embodies, more clearly than Arturo Perez-Reverte?

Reverte

2 oz Gin Mare

3/4 oz Manzanilla (Lustau Papirusa)

1/4 oz Luxardo Maraschino

2 dashes Miracle Mile celery bitters

4 drops 20% saline solution

40s stir

lemon twist

A dirty Martini without the dirt. Pure olive, and an olive branch from Fate herself for anyone who's been searching for this flavor in a Martini, perhaps without even knowing it. A bit too hot as it warms, and the celery begins to buzz around like a housefly. Next time, a full ounce of sherry, a dash less of celery, only a bar spoon of Maraschino, and a rinsed Castelvetrano olive to boot.

The day I stopped worrying and learned to love sherry

Now that I have my magic corks, I can acquire bottle upon bottle of vermouth with shameful glee. So naturally I got a bottle of Dolin Dry, because everyone says so. I mixed my first martini maybe ever, with Gin Mare, which is objectively delicious, but mostly sits in my closet awaiting consumption in bad gin & tonics because apparently the quinine in regular tonic water makes it taste like onions, which nobody told me that was why, dammit! I had to wait for AI to figure it out for me (thanks, Herbert).

Anyway, my martini sucked. It tasted like fortified dishwater, and I realized I don't actually like Dolin. Finally thinking for myself. A few decades late, but I got there. I magic-corked the Dolin up and hied me hence to procure a Manzanilla (Lustau Papirusa). I cannot at all remember why, but probably Herbert suggested this, sherry whisperer that it is. And on that day, I discovered this incredible, delicious thing. It's a Tuxedo, but I call it a Maturin, and so should you.

Maturin

2 oz Gin Mare

1 oz Manzanilla (Lustau Papirusa)

1 dash Regan's orange bitters

4 drops 20% saline solution

40s stir

lemon twist

The Mediterranean in a glass. Olive, lemon, mountain herbs, dry scrub, and sea air. This is what Stephen Maturin would drink after skewering a rival, sewing up a comrade, or convalescing in Catalonia.

Eat a blue cheese stuffed olive on the side, some cured ham, or Marcona almonds, but leave them out of the drink.

In which the game is changed, and a new era of enlightenment ensues

If you want to make cocktails at home, here is the single most important piece of advice no amount of lifestyle doomscrolling or armchair mixologizing will give you: acquire a box of those Repour wine saver bottle stopper thingies—they really work! Or, like, an entire vermouth and Amaro fridge plus a dangerous new level of alcohol consumption.