As this is posted, yours truly will be about to board the world’s greatest conveyance: the train. When you ride in a car, especially if you’re driving — and I always am, since I’m a control freak* — you’re worried about the car in the lane next to you, or the one oncoming, or the deer/pedestrian/deer-pedestrian about to veer into your path. In a plane, you never have the feeling of traveling, but rather of being transported from one location to another, without ever having had any interaction with the miles between. I hate that. I love of hurtling just above the earth as the landscape ticks by as through an old-time movie, all frames and constant flickering, unencumbered by the need to actually attend to what exactly is inside those frames and what precisely is flickering past.
The train is my preferred mode of travel. On a train, there are no worries, no security lines, no hidden fees and no tolls. On a train, there are comfortable seats, stations right downtown, bar cars and a sense of romance. You can watch as the stories of the places you pass become the narrative of your journey: the city itself fades to a stretch of industry and loading docks, which become dense suburbs, which in turn give way to a stretch of seeming desolation, yet beyond that strip of trees lies the suburbs, hiding from this heavy-gauge rail that thunders past with just as little care for it; as the hours pass, the ocean comes into view, but only fleetingly, tauntingly,as small cottages and masts of pleasure boats come in and out of view, giving glimpses of leisure and amusement in momentary fits; the scene reverses itself as those dalliances disappear and return to the mask of suburbia, which in turn yields to the city, the train shuddering and clattering to announce its arrival. Yes. A sense of romance. A flirtation with a world between places of interest, as if every inch of creation were actually a place of interest yet to become known to you.
What’s that? A drink? It would seem appropriate, with all this love of rails and locomotion that today be about Boilermakers or Night Train. Perhaps another day. For today, in honor of my destination, we’re going with the first non-gin delicacy: The Manhattan.The first and last word in Manhattans is this: rye. If you’re ordering one and you don’t want rye, my advice is simple: don’t order one. There are plenty of other whiskey drinks in this world, and should liver or server failure not take me from you, we’ll go through plenty of them and still by no means exhaust them. When it comes to rye, however, there aren’t. So when a recipe calls for it, heed it. Rye is whiskey’s aloof, sophisticated cousin, who only drops into town twice a year but recommends the best books, a couple new bands and makes fantastic scrambled eggs. Appreciate rye for what it is: not whiskey, who cock-blocks you, gets belligerent with bouncers and then blasts the Postal Service at your place while drunk-dialing his high-school ex.**
A Manhattan — like most good cocktails — is not a drink to be had in order to have more. A good Manhattan is best enjoyed over a heated conversation, one during which you\’ll forget you have a drink until you are about to close your argument, whereupon you pick up the glass, take that shocked sip of a parched man fresh from the desert, wipe your lips, and deliver the thundering chorus of a thousand just men clamoring for recompense and glory. Alternatively, I like to drink one while reading a book in which I’m engrossed, in which dozens of pages can pass my eyes before I dare take them from the page. If done in a bar, people will generally mistake you for someone who writes for a literary magazine. These people are idiots who don’t read, but you’ll still feel slightly more respectable when that happens, until you realize people who write for literary magazines are also idiots.
Get it in a cocktail glass neat. Get it on the rocks in a highball. Piss off your bartender by asking for it as above: highball, neat. I don’t generally recommend getting much of anything in a cocktail glass, because I am a clumsy person who, when not paying full attention to my drink as when I am engaged in a vigorous debate or a bout of hot literary action, will lose precious sips by not-quite-perfectly grabbing the slender stalk of the cocktail glass. If you are not such a bumbling clod unfit for high society, have at; there’s nothing to be ashamed of in drinking from a cocktail glass, provided there’s not vodka inside it.
Lastly, there are many ways to order a Manhattan, from Sasha Obama-sweet to Sahara-dry. These variations generally have to do with the amount of sweet vermouth. As we will discover together, I am almost always a person who says the less the better when it comes to this moderating agent, and the Manhattan is no exception. I am, however, of the opinion that you should be able to taste it against the bitters. The right admixture of bitters and vermouth can make the rye explode, and it’s that admixture that gives the Manhattan its uncanny ability to not only reward you for making a spectacular argument or navigating some dense but exhilarating prose, but to keep you coming back for more. Don’t get it so that it’s all rye with a dash of bitters, but also take care to ensure you’re not getting the hard-liquor equivalent of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I go with a 3:1 rye:vermouth ratio and find it generally works. If it’s a particularly sweet rye, you might want to back it off some, but it’s a good baseline from which you can get started.
Pro-tip: the cherry is legit. Insist on it. Leave it to sit there. If you’re with a companion who is curious, it makes a perfect way to introduce them to your new drink. You look magnanimous for letting them have some of your drink, inviting them to really drink with you, and you don’t actually have to give up much of your actual drink. This works for fruit that ends up actually inside any drink. This also may or may not be a great way to pick up women whom you have just dazzled by reading your grizzled copy of The Naked and the Dead, debating the pros and cons of the rise of charter schools in American cities, or gazing off into the middle distance as you try to forget the drudgery of a week finally gone past.
Manhattan:
3 oz. Rye (Old Overholt for sweet; Templeton for smokiness; but bars will generally have Jim Beam Yellow Label)
1 oz. Sweet Vermouth (Make it French rather than Italian and it’s called a Brooklyn, which, of course it is)
Generous dash of bitters***
For a highball: pour over ice. For a cocktail glass: stir that shit, never shake it, never shake anything as it just cracks the ice and dilutes the drink unnecessarily, strain and pour.
Add maraschino cherry and serve.
Cheers.
* Not when drinking though. As a control freak, I will hand off my keys at the slightest sign of trouble.
** Seriously, why are you still friends with whiskey? You always end up with a pillowcase of vomit whenever you hang out.
*** I always fall on the heavy end of bitters usage. If you drink coffee with cream and sugar, consider how much of either you use and either deduct from the bitters or add to the sweet moderator accordingly.
Shakespeare.