I found this recipe on liquor.com.

bourbon (or rye), sweet vermouth, bitters, orange bitters

The history of The Manhattan is muddy and uninteresting, so I decided to dive into the history of bitters. From Wikipedia, “A bitters is traditionally an alcoholic preparation flavored with botanical matter so that the end result is characterized by a bitter, sour, or bittersweet flavor. Numerous longstanding brands of bitters were originally developed as patent medicines, but now are sold as digestifs, sometimes with herbal properties, and cocktail flavorings.”⁣
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Patent Medicines. Meaning “cure all tonics” sold by snake-oil salesmen. To fix things like “chronic weakness” and “complaints of women” and “blood diseases”. 😂⁣
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The bitters commonly used in drinks is Angostura Bitters, named after a city in Venezuela. It was originally sold as a patent medicine, but rebranded itself. By 1900, Angostura Bitters were a big part of the “Golden Age of the Cocktail”, as bitters was an ingredient in many popular drinks. When the Pure Food & Drug Act in the US in 1906 came down on the patent medicine industry, Angostura Bitters survived the new regulations. Angostura wasn’t a cure-all medicine anymore, it was a cocktail flavoring. And the brand, and the oversized label, lives on to this day, since 1824.⁣
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The Manhattan is made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters. This one I’ve made is a Sweet Manhattan, because I’ve added a splash of the syrup from the maraschino cherries. Before this project, I had never really had whiskey before, and I didn’t think I liked it. Turns out I do! I doubt I could drink whiskey straight up, but this cocktail is very good.⁣
(Originally posted May 2, 2020)