Manhattan with New Riff Malted Rye Recipe
Manhattan with New Riff Malted Rye Ingredients
2 oz / 60 ml New Riff Kentucky Straight Malted Rye Whiskey
1 oz / 30 ml Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth
3 droppers Scruffy City Bitters classic aromatic bitters
Cocktail cherries for garnish
How to make a Manhattan with New Riff Malted Rye
Add the rye, sweet vermouth, and bitters to a mixing glass with ice.
Stir until well chilled, about 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with cherries on a pick.
The Manhattan is the simplest test of whether three good bottles work together: whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters, with nothing to hide behind. For this one we poured New Riff Kentucky Straight Malted Rye, made from 100% malted rye, bottled in bond, and aged six years. Almost nobody malts rye. Malting polishes the grain's usual bite, so the spice tastes layered instead of sharp and the finish lands on clove and cinnamon.
That finish is the trick. The classic aromatic bitters are from Scruffy City Bitters, the new Knoxville company behind the cherry vanilla bitters in our root beer old fashioned and the peach bitters in our monarch martini. This batch is built on orange, cinnamon, clove, coriander, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, and gentian root, so the bitters pick up right where the whiskey leaves off. Carpano Antica Formula, from the Turin house that has been making vermouth since 1786, brings the vanilla and dried fruit, and a 100 proof rye is one of the few whiskeys that can stand up to it.
