Episode 1:The Manhattan Project – Manhattans

We're kicking off the series with the cocktail that I think of as THE cocktail of cocktails...the Manhattan. At the front of the show, Mr. Jason Kruse, our researcher, and I sat and discussed what he discovered while tracking down the origins of the Manhattan. First of all, the Manhattan's claim to fame as the longest unchanged cocktail stands up to the available information. The first version we found is, in fact, the same version served today. Though it has been played with and changed by various bartenders over the years, particularly in its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and there are A LOT of variations on this drink), none of those versions stuck as the standard. The most popular year of origin is 1874.  This does not align with what we discovered as the first written recipe for the Manhattan which occurs in 1884.  1874 is not definitively wrong, but there is no evidence for its existence at that time, though, like any trade at the time, the culture and tradition was often passe...