Finishing Off My House Manhattan

Obviously, it's garnished with a cherry. But does adding in some more cherry syrup take it to the next level?

I’ve got the recipe for my Manhattan dialed in, but it still feels like it’s missing one piece. And I think I found it.

I’ve been adding a cocktail cherry to every Manhattan I’ve made for this project. It’s the perfect garnish for the drink - a burst of fruity sweetness to calm the heat. And when I realized the drink might be missing a bit of that fruitiness throughout, I thought “what if I add more cherries?” But, that’s an expensive endeavor (good cocktail cherries ain’t cheap and the cheap ones ain’t worth buying). So I thought “what about just adding some more of the syrup to the glass with the cherry?” And that’s a cheaper idea with the same impact.

So, I made the drink with the bill below and 2 dashes each of Ango and orange bitters. I added all of that to a mixing glass with ice, stirred, and let it sit a minute. I added a cocktail cherry, making sure the spoon was full of the syrup, to the rocks glass with ice. Then, I dipped the spoon back into the cherry jar and added a spoon of syrup (no cherry) to the rocks glass too. I strained the drink on top of that, stirred it around a bit, and took a sip. It was great.

A bar spoon is a sixth of an ounce, so here there’s maybe about a quarter ounce of syrup at the absolute most. But that little amount makes a big difference here. For the first time, it felt like the drink was fully rounded out. It had enough body at the back to stand up to the punch and spice up front. I was getting hints of that fruitiness I thought was missing. Just a bit of cherry juice was the missing piece.

To avoid complicating the recipe too much, I didn’t add the syrup but I did increase the dilution factor (from the standard 1.25 I’ve been using). The extra dilution probably helps about as much as the syrup in backing down some of the punch. And right below 28% feels right for this drink - it’s definitely got less straight heat than the Martini, but definitely has a lot more than the Negroni. It’s a strong drink, but it’s balanced out now. I really like this one.

Back in a few weeks to start developing my house Daiquiri!