History of the Manhattan Cocktail

A Murky Birth in Gilded Age New York

The Manhattan's origins are contested in the way that only truly great things can afford to be. The most popular story places its creation at the Manhattan Club on Fifth Avenue in the early 1870s, where a bartender supposedly invented it for a banquet hosted by Lady Randolph Churchill. Historians have since disproved this version — Lady Churchill was in England at the time, and almost certainly pregnant. But the story persists because it has the right energy: glamorous, specific, and impossible to fully verify.

A more credible account traces the drink to a Manhattan saloon somewhere around 1874, mixing the rye whiskey that dominated American drinking culture at the time with Italian vermouth, which had recently arrived in significant quantities from European imports. Bitters were already a standard bartending tool, used medicinally as much as for flavor. The combination was not a leap of genius so much as an elegant evolution of what was already on the bar.

By 1882 the recipe appeared in print. By 1895 it was in Modern American Drinks by George Kappeler. The Manhattan had become a canonical recipe within twenty years of its probable invention, which tells you something about how quickly the American bar culture of the period recognized a superior drink.

The Rye vs. Bourbon Question

The original Manhattan was a rye drink. Rye whiskey was the dominant grain spirit in pre-Prohibition America, particularly in the Northeast, and its spicy, assertive character balanced the sweetness of Italian vermouth in a way that most people who make the drink with bourbon today are missing. Rye brings dryness, pepper, and structure. Bourbon brings caramel and softness, which produces a rounder, easier cocktail but a fundamentally different one.

Prohibition changed everything. American rye production collapsed during the 1920s, and when legal spirits returned in 1933 the supply had not recovered. Bourbon, produced predominantly in Kentucky and historically resilient, filled the gap. Generations of bartenders learned the Manhattan with bourbon, and that version became the standard in most American bars through the mid-20th century.

The craft cocktail revival of the 2000s brought rye back with force. Bartenders at places like Death & Co and Milk & Honey in New York began insisting on rye. Today the debate continues bar by bar, and the best answer remains the honest one: both are legitimate, but they produce different drinks. If you have never tried a rye Manhattan at a serious New York cocktail bar, put it near the top of your list.

Vermouth: The Ingredient That Made and Nearly Broke It

The Manhattan's reputation suffered badly in the second half of the 20th century, and the culprit was vermouth. Sweet Italian vermouth — Cinzano, Martini Rosso, Carpano Punt e Mes — is a living product. It oxidizes after opening. A bar that kept its vermouth on the back shelf for six months, unrefrigerated and half-empty, was pouring something medicinal and unpleasant into every Manhattan it made.

The rise of dry martini culture made things worse. As vermouth fell out of fashion in spirits-forward cocktails, its quality in the average bar deteriorated. Customers who ordered Manhattans in the 1980s often got poorly made versions with stale vermouth, and many of them never came back to the drink.

The modern bar industry corrected this. High-quality sweet vermouths — Carpano Antica Formula, Cocchi Vermouth di Torino, Dolin Rouge — became widely available. Bartenders began treating vermouth as a perishable product, refrigerating it, dating bottles, and replacing them regularly. The Manhattan that a skilled bartender makes today with fresh Carpano Antica and good rye is a genuinely different drink from what was sold under the same name thirty years ago.

The Perfect Manhattan and Other Variations

The standard Manhattan uses sweet vermouth exclusively, and this is where the debate starts for most bartenders. The "Perfect Manhattan" splits the vermouth measure equally between sweet and dry, producing a drier, more complex profile. Some bars offer a "Dry Manhattan" made with dry vermouth only, though this strays far from the original in character. None of these variations is wrong; they reflect different preferences for sweetness and herbal complexity.

The Black Manhattan substitutes Averna amaro for sweet vermouth, producing a bitter, viscous, deeply herbal drink. The Vieux Carré, invented at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, combines rye, cognac, sweet vermouth, Bénédictine, and both Peychaud's and Angostura bitters. It is properly understood as a Manhattan variation and one of the finest drinks in the American canon. You can find excellent versions at the best cocktail bars in New Orleans, served in the same city where it was born.

The Rob Roy substitutes Scotch whisky for rye or bourbon, bringing smoke and earthiness in place of American grain. Technically a different cocktail, it shares the Manhattan's DNA entirely. Similarly, the Toronto uses Fernet-Branca alongside rye and simple syrup to produce something bittersweet and more complex than its three-ingredient structure suggests.

The Manhattan Today

The Manhattan never really went away, but it has had a genuine renaissance. It now appears on virtually every serious cocktail bar menu, from the best cocktail bars worldwide to neighborhood bistros that have learned to stock decent rye. Single-barrel rye releases from distilleries like Rittenhouse, Pikesville, and Sazerac have given bartenders increasingly specific building blocks.

In New York, the Manhattan has taken on the quality of a city emblem. Bars that want to signal their seriousness about whiskey will often have a Manhattan on the menu built around a specific rye chosen for the purpose. Some top-end bars have a Manhattan menu of four or five versions, each highlighting a different whiskey and vermouth combination. This is not pretension; it is an honest acknowledgment that this particular combination of ingredients rewards attention in a way that most cocktails do not.

If you want to understand the arc of American cocktail culture from the 1870s to the present, the Manhattan is the single most efficient drink to trace. It contains the history of American whiskey production, the evolution of vermouth as an ingredient, the damage done by Prohibition, the mediocrity of post-war bar culture, and the excellence of the contemporary craft cocktail movement. All in one glass, stirred, with a cherry. Order one at a bar that takes it seriously. You will know immediately whether they do or not.

For a deeper understanding of the cocktail canon, read our history of the Old Fashioned and the story of the dry martini. Both trace the same American drinking culture from different angles and are worth reading alongside this one.