Sharkbaits Cocktail of the Week: Crantastic Gamble

Hello and happy Friday once again! Thankfully stuff has kind of calmed down this week, with the exception of preparing to take a professional certification exam. I’m not exactly feeling confident since the training class was in July and I’m only taking the exam now but we’ll see how it goes. As to the drink this week, I felt like doing a little bit of an experiment. It’s starting to feel proper fall up here, with cool mornings and evenings, but warm afternoons. I thought I’d get into the fall spirit a bit early and try a cranberry Manhattan. I figured I’ll adjust the vermouth for cranberry, and orange bitters for angostura. I’m guessing it’ll trend to be more of a rye sour, but still seems like a good idea.

Cranberry Manhattan

2 oz. Rittenhouse Rye

1 oz. Cranberry juice

2 dashes Orange Bitters

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Add ice. Stir and strain into a coupe.

Strong notes of cranberry on the nose. Between this and the color looking redder than I anticipated, I fear one full ounce of cranberry juice will be too much in this application.

Yup. That is too much cranberry. It overpowers the rye almost instantly, and something about this is…off. I’m not sure what but the flavors seem to be fighting each other. I figured the rye would offset the bitterness of the cranberry, but it really doesn’t. It’s like it is just layered onto the base rye and they’re fighting for my attention. I was wondering if I needed something else in there, and clearly I do. I’m thinking the bitters might be a mistake too. I chose to use orange bitters since citrus and cranberry is a good combination but yikes, this wasn’t the case. I think it just added to the conflicting flavors going on here. Another miss.

Thankfully the finish is just a diminishing combination of the rye and cranberry. It doesn’t linger and leaves rather quickly, which is a good thing in this case. I suppose all of my experiments can’t be winners and unfortunately this is one of them. However I did finish it though because I’m no quitter. Just based on that alone it’s not the worst one I’ve ever made in this space, but it’s kinda close. I do think it’s salvageable, especially since I’ve used cranberry successfully before. This might get put on the back burner though. Perhaps one to tweak for thanksgiving…

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)