Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Late Substitutions

Wait? It’s Friday again? Already? When the hell did that happen? These weeks and days are melding together it seems in an endless slog through the awfulness that is the year 2020.

This week some states started to re-open in stages, which is a small shimmer of hope that we may finally be turning a corner here. We can only hope right?

Anyway, enough focusing on the negatives. The positive is I’m still here to suggest drinks for the making! This week was a bit of a late substitution actually. Up until mid week I was dead set on making one drink, and then decided to keep it in the back pocket in case of an emergency.

The drink that made me pivot is one by Jim Meehan from Please Don’t Tell. It combined rye, elderflower, Fernet…

Wait a minute. This sounds familiar.

Son of a bitch.

Either A) I’m not that creative, or B) I’m a better mixologist than I give myself credit for.

Ok then. Still wanting to keep the other drink in reserve, it’s time to make our second substitution of the match:

The Dry Manhattan or, The Rye & Dry:

2 oz. Rye whiskey

1 oz. Dry vermouth

2 dashes Angostura biters

Add all ingredients to a shaker filled halfway with cracked ice. Shake until the outside begins to frost over. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

It looks almost exactly like a Manhattan, thanks to the rye. However upon further inspection, it’s just a touch lighter than a normal one. At first glance, it appears to be a regular sweet vermouth Manhattan.

You first notice the difference in the nose. It smells…off, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. You see the glass, and your brain thinks Manhattan. You bring the glass up to take a sip and you start to get those familiar scents: whiskey & sweet luxardo cherry, but again, something is off. You don’t get a deeper saccharine odor, as you normally do.

The taste is really where you figure out this isn’t your run of the mill Manhattan! The rye dominates from the get go. Spicy notes hit you like a brick, and the assault keeps on coming. Amazingly, the dry vermouth seems to enhance the rye flavor. That was a bit unexpected for sure. The luxardo cherry is helpless. Its flavor and sweet notes are buried under an avalanche of intense dry spiciness.

Despite its bold flavor palate, I don’t hate this. As I’ve noted many times before, I prefer a stronger drink, and boy did I get one here. However, I love a Manhattan. (It’s typically my fallback at a cocktail bar if I’m undecided and it isn’t a good time to talk to the bartender for a couple minutes to try something new.) So in this case, it does get a few points off for looking like a Manhattan, but definitely not tasting like one. Keep this one in reserve, for when you need an emergency sub.

(Banner image found here)