How Should You Make Your Vieux Carré?

A quarter ounce of vermouth can make a big difference.

I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of carefully improved versions of classic cocktails.

I like tweaks and tricks, altered ratios and slight changes to ingredients, specific brands and bottles designed to take well-known drinks and elevate them somehow. This is not out of a distaste for old drinks or a sense of superiority to the old ways; on the contrary, the best of these tricks and tweaks make classic cocktails built on strong foundations taste more like themselves. The intent, in most cases, is not to completely change the drink, but to take the underlying idea and sharpen it just a little bit more. 

But sometimes the old ways are best, and the modern takes leave me cold. I can usually understand the intention behind contemporary updates, and sometimes I can even learn a lesson or two — but I don’t find the supposedly improved product quite as appealing. 

Such is the case with the Vieux Carré, a classic New Orleans cocktail that is one of my favorite easy winter sippers. Essentially a spicy, herbal, split-base Manhattan served on the rocks, it has always consisted of six ingredients — Peychaud’s bitters, Angostura bitters, Benedictine, sweet vermouth, cognac, and rye whiskey. The big question, then, is what proportions to use.