- 60mL rye
- 30mL amaro (typically Averna)
- 1-2 dashes orange bitters and/or Angostura bitters
Mix all ingredients in a mixing glass or tin. Stir over ice until well chilled. Pour into a coupe or similar glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.
Wheee… it’s one of these weeks. Extra long. And it’s only Tuesday. That’s the kind of happy hour that calls for a drink like a black manhattan.
It’s a pretty simple twist on a classic manhattan; you substitute some amaro for the vermouth in the classic recipe. The original recipe calls for Averna, but I’ve found many different amaros will work. Each will give its own twist on the flavor of the drink, of course.
The amaro gives the drink a bit more syrupiness than you’d get from a classic manhattan. And each amaro lending it’s own particular flavor will give it a nice kick. There can be a subtle art of matching a rye1or bourbon, but as I mentioned in my post on the manhattan, you’d be wrong ;D to an amaro to bitters that can give the drink its trifecta of perfection. But it’s also simple enough that sometimes you can just say fuck it and throw one together quickly after a long day at the office, or whatever it is that you do2I don’t like to pry.
Like the trinidad sour, this also feels like something that should be a classic recipe recovered from a dusty tome of pre-prohibition cocktails. But once again, it is not. This drink is barely even past its training wheels. The first documented black manhattan was a scant few years ago, put together in 2015 at Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco by Todd Smith. And yet, it feels like a classic. It feels dark and full of mystery. It feels like you need some extra raunchy jazz music to go with it. And like so many other, it’s a perfect drink after a long day at work.