Happy Friday! This is the first of two back to back long weekends I have, and I fully intend on enjoying every minute of them. As I’ve mentioned before here, I enjoy looking for seasonal drinks, and once again this week was no exception. Though I’m not sure how “seasonal” this week’s drink is. This week’s concoction is more of an “Oh! I have this ingredient and am needing an excuse to use it” kind of week. I found an adaptation of a Manhattan in my PDT book called the Deshler. I was happy to see this drink calling for Dubonnet because I still have a good amount of it from when I made the Queen’s favorite cocktail last month. I’d like to not waste it, and I want a little more variety in the drinks I make with it. So let’s see how it works with rye:

Deshler

1.5 oz Rittenhouse Bonded Rye Whiskey

1 oz. Dubonnet Rouge

.25 oz. Cointreau

2 dashes Peychauds Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with an orange twist.

The nose has a lot of red wine notes from the Dubonnet. I also get an abundance of orange from the peel and the Cointreau. It’s a nice combination actually. Very seasonal to be honest. It kind of has a cool mulled wine vibe to this already.

The taste is wine-y and bitter up front, but in a good way. It compliments the rye very well. It is very reminiscent of a Manhattan, especially as the sip evolves on the palate. The longer you taste it, the more it resembles a regular Manhattan. Though it deviates from a standard one in the sweetener. As you know, a normal Manhattan uses sweet vermouth, which is also wine based. As the name implies, it adds a touch of sweetener. Dubonnet while also wine based, is much more bitter than sweet vermouth. So it adds that subtle red wine flavor that is omnipresent in Manhattans, but makes it much drier. The dryness is balanced out by the addition of the orange from the liqueur and the garnish. It didn’t say to in the recipe, but I expressed (squeezed) the oils out of the peel before dropping in to my glass.

This was good. I really liked how it was Manhattan-esque, but just different enough to let you know were enjoying something different. It’s also a great use of the Dubonnet. As mentioned before, I’m still looking for ways to use this and having this recipe in the repertoire certainly satisfies that need. Enjoy the weekend!