Manhattan cocktail12/11/2023 ![]() As I knew Arfsten was busy, I rang the doorbell of Jan Robert Hinrichsen, whose well-tended cattle farm on the west coast is also home to Hinrichsens Inselwhisky, the island’s first and only whisky distillery. But this is accompanied by the occasional yowling of the North Sea and the kind of biblical rain that’d make Noah rush for the boatyard.Įven so, Föhr is also the kind of place that lends itself to flights of fancy, like me showing up at a farmhouse on a whim, just before dark, and in the hope of finding out more answers. There are sweeping beaches, shallow seas and quaint thatched houses and farmsteads unchanged since medieval times. Coincidence that this cocktail recipe eventually travelled back across the Atlantic? Not likely.Īway from Wyk’s pubs and bars – out on countryside roads, past the 13th-Century Frisian Cathedral, where you can see the tombstones of whalers – it’s easy to get a feel for what keeps the Frisians tied to Föhr. Around this time, circa the 1880s, an in-demand party drink using rye whiskey, a sweet vermouth modifier and bitters was invented in New York’s Manhattan Club (contrarily, another legend claims this a myth and that the drink was, in fact, invented at the Hoffman House in the 1870s). German delis opened in Brooklyn bakeries appeared in the Bronx and, crucially, bartenders learnt the art of the aperitif in Manhattan. Soon, new family businesses were flourishing across the Atlantic. Soon, the Big Apple was brimming with North Sea refugees. Some felt the gravitational pull of the gold rush in California, but the majority stayed on the US’ east coast. First to Hamburg, 200km to the south, then, to America, 6,000km away, where fortune awaited. The whaling industry, which stretched from New Bedford and Nantucket in Massachusetts to Tasmania, Australia, collapsed in the late 19th-Century, and Föhr’s whalers were put out of business. Money was scarce, work scarcer still, and the workforce took to whaling. Long before the cult drink gripped the island’s subconscious, Föhr was little more than an island of farmers and fishermen, a downbeat community 10km from the mainland, where the way of life was shaped by the land, the North Sea and the elements. If you want to understand Föhr and its love of the Manhattan, you have to make sense of the island’s distinctive geography and backstory. Where, though, did this obsession come from? Such fanatics might only be found on Föhr. The world is filled with people who have never heard of a Manhattan, let alone had the desire to drink one, but there are others who not only know the well-crafted cocktail well, but treat it with such religious fervour that it is sacred like holy water. Mr Manhattan had his farm to attend to – asking me to drop by to see him the following morning – and so I found myself wondering about Föhr and its nostalgia for a cocktail born half a world away in New York City. And some people can drink a dozen in one go easily. Weddings, funerals, parties, christenings – we drink one at almost every occasion. “The Manhattan is a longstanding tradition here and everyone grew up with it. “Would you like another?” asked Hansen, hovering nearby with the bottle in hand, which he had topped up from a glass demijohn filled with the premixed liquid. It was an unexpected welcome, and soon the aperitifs were garnished with maraschino cherries spiked through the midriff with cocktail sticks. Read more about how to batch cocktails here.Arfsten nodded to barkeep Andreas Hansen, who produced a label-less, chilled bottle and two more tumblers. To serve, measure out the amount of cocktail you recorded in step 1 after being stirred with ice and strained.Mix the ingredients together, place in a serving vessel, and chill well.Once you have your ingredients, measure them out according to the math you did in Steps 2 and 3.Remember that drinks are usually sold in 750mL bottles. ![]() Use the resulting numbers to help you figure out how many bottles of each ingredient you'll need to buy. ![]() ![]() Bitters tend to become more pronounced over time in batched cocktails so you don't need to use as much.
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