Playing Favourites: Classic Cocktails

Cocktail guru and frequent Food & Drink contributor Christine Sismondo provided The Classic recipe in our Summer 2020 issue, combining the ideal ratio of 2 oz rye whisky, 1 oz sweet red vermouth, 3 dashes Angostura bitters and five ice cubes in a mixing glass. Stir well for 45 seconds and strain into a chilled coupe, she wrote, then “garnish with a plump, rich amarena cherry from Italy, like Toschi or Fabbri brands.”

This cocktail was created at The Manhattan Club on November 3, 1874, to celebrate the election of Samuel J. Tilden as governor of New York. Many insist that it was Jennie Jerome, the renowned beauty and socialite, who asked the barman to come up with something special and new that night, but it cannot be true. She was in England at the time with her husband, Lord Randolph Churchill, staying at Blenheim Palace and about to give birth to her son Winston. It seems the anonymous barman acted alone….

The Perfect Manhattan using half dry white and half sweet red vermouth, is already a splendid cocktail in its own right. There’s a pleasing symmetry in choosing the vermouths from the same producer. You could substitute amontillado sherry for the vermouth, use orange bitters instead of Angostura, then add a thumb-size piece of orange peel and garnish with a lemon twist—voilà! Now you have a Spanish Manhattan, as created for our Autumn 2018 issue by Michelle P. E. Hunt and Laura Panter, aka The Martini Club.

Manhattans made with bourbon or Canadian corn-blend whiskies are easily found but only a pure rye whisky has the necessary lightness and sharp spice to challenge the sweetness of vermouth. Alberta Premium Whisky is the iconic choice in Canada.

In fall 2019, we kind of hedged our bets with Victoria Walsh's customizable Martini which suggests 2 oz of vodka or gin, and ½ oz dry vermouth—or less, “to your liking.” Even the lemon twist garnish had an optional alternative in a green cocktail olive. But isn’t that the point about a Martini? The simplest cocktail of them all presents infinite opportunities for personalisation. The only common ground is that it must be served very, very cold. My own vodka of choice at the moment is Zirkova One Ultra Premium Vodka—so smooth with fennel, vanilla and lemon aromas.

Let us skip gratefully over the tangled jungle of theory concerning the origins of the Gin Martini. The earliest use of the precise term “Vodka Martini” seems to be in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks by American tax attorney David A. Embury, published in 1948. (In later editions, he called the drink a Kangaroo, though the cocktail has no connection with Australia.) Vodka was an exotic ingredient in the 1940s, inextricably associated with Eastern Europe. And that was still the case when Sean Connery’s James Bond first ordered one in the movie Dr. No (1962); though it’s the waiter who described it, not 007: “One medium-dry Vodka Martini, mixed like you said, Sir, and not stirred.” An Englishman who preferred shaking vodka to stirring gin!? Clearly a new age was dawning.

Once upon a time, a dash of orange bitters was essential in a Martini. That detail seems to have vanished but could easily be restored with any kind of modern bitters, not to mention olive or caper brine. The spirit-vermouth ratio is key. Embury liked 7 to 1; Winston Churchill merely glanced at the vermouth bottle. Somewhere in between is “in and out”—rinsing the glass with a little vermouth then pouring it away. Swap out the dry white vermouth for sake or icewine or, less controversially, fino sherry. A particularly harmonious combination results from using peppery, spicy Aurora Crystal Head wheat vodka and Tio Pepe Extra Dry Fino sherry, and garnishing with an orange twist. This vodka has the edginess to stand up to such a forthright fino.

Disarmingly simple to make, a Negroni calls for equal parts gin, Campari and sweet red Italian vermouth stirred and served on the rocks with an orange twist as the garnish. In our Early Summer 2015 issue, we suggest using an orange wheel and squeezing the juice into the drink. The perfect balance of botanical, bitter and sweet is what makes this cocktail so intriguing.

One afternoon in 1919, Count Camillo Luigi Manfredo Maria Negroni walked into the Caffè Casoni in Florence, Italy, and ordered an Americano, that popular and refreshing cocktail made from equal amounts of Campari and sweet red vermouth, finished with soda water and an orange twist. “But,” he said to the bartender, a man named Fosco Scarselli, “replace the soda water with gin.” And the Negroni was born. The Count was an interesting man. Born in 1868, he spent 20 years of his life as a cowboy and rodeo clown in the U.S. and Alberta, earning a reputation as a gambler and party animal. He returned to Florence in 1905 and died in 1934.

You can play with the proportions (upping the ratio of gin is the most common variation) or lengthen the drink with a splash of soda. But the most popular way to tinker with the taste is to specify different gins or vermouths (the Campari and the orange garnish remain inviolate). Using Hendrick’s Gin brings hints of rose petal and cucumber to the party, while Bruichladdich The Botanist Islay Dry Gin emphasizes more herbal notes. A slightly drier vermouth such as Dolin Vermouth De Chambery Rouge AOC can also have a small but significant impact. Barrel-aged Negronis are a recent, very welcome phenomenon.

What if you took a Negroni but switched bourbon for the gin? Why, you’d have a Boulevardier, another superb cocktail, invented by American magazine proprietor Erskine Gwynne in Paris in 1927, and therefore beloved by many a journalist. Or what if you used Prosecco instead of gin? That’s called a Negroni Sbagliato (a “Mistaken Negroni”), though it sounds more like a variation on an Americano.

Jessica Huras offered an exemplary Old Fashioned in our Autumn 2021 issue, starting with a sugar cube (or ½ tsp/2 mL sugar) and 3 dashes Angostura bitters, muddled until the sugar dissolves. Add 2 oz bourbon (or rye) and stir. Add a single large ice cube and gently stir until chilled. Take orange peel and twist it over the glass to express the oil before dropping it in. So simple—and no water or soda in sight. Which bourbon? You can’t go wrong with bold, fruity Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey: it adds its own vanilla caramel note to the cocktail.

When members of the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Ky., ordered an “old fashioned whiskey cocktail” during the 1880s, that was exactly what they wanted. Not something new-fangled, but a drink like the simply named Whiskey Cocktail in How to Mix Drinks (aka The Bar-Tender’s Guide), the first-ever cocktail manual published in the U.S., written by celebrity bartender Jerry Thomas and published in 1862. Thomas called for “3 or 4 dashes of gum syrup, 2 do. bitters (Bogart’s), 1 wine glass of whiskey, and a piece of lemon peel. Fill one-third full of fine ice; shake and strain in a fancy red wine-glass.” To him, the cocktail was thoroughly modern, of course: it took time before it earned the name Old Fashioned.

Some people like to add a maraschino cherry and a slice of orange to the sugar and bitters, and muddle everything well before building the drink. Others are outraged by this practice, convinced that a twist of lemon or orange as a garnish is all the fruit needed. Jerry Thomas’s “Bogart’s bitters” (see below) is assumed to be a mistake—he must have meant Boker’s bitters, a very popular 19th-century brand with a rich mocha note. Though Angostura is most often used today, chocolate bitters might be closer to the original. Change up the sweetener by using a flavoured sugar or syrup.

Over the years, fans have rung the changes by making exactly the same cocktail but with a different spirit. In the 1930s, an Old Fashioned Dutch was a thing, switching a Dutch genever gin like Bols or De Kuyper for the whiskey. Today, a Brandy Old Fashioned, made with a full complement of fruit and Cognac instead of bourbon, is the unofficial cocktail of the state of Wisconsin.

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