This Thanksgiving, Put Cranberry Sauce In a Rum-Rye Manhattan

Another cocktail to make with this year's special ingredient.

For this year’s initial Thanksgiving cocktail, we made a Sidecar variation with jellied cranberry sauce.

You can always just serve that cranberry sauce with your meal. But if you want to make another cocktail, try putting it in a Manhattan. Specifically, a Manhattan with a split base of aged rum and rye. 

This is a somewhat simpler drink, and with its stirred and boozy, cold-weather-sipper profile, it may appeal even more to some readers. 

To me, the Thanksgiving Sidecar makes for an ideal starter drink. That’s what you sip while you’re socializing with family and company before the big meal has gotten underway.

This Manhattan, in contrast, makes for an excellent post-dinner drink. This is what you keep by your side when you’re winding down after you’ve cleared the table and cleaned the kitchen — or simply decided not to. 

This construction is pretty simple: It takes the Manhattan structure — two parts rye whiskey, one part sweet vermouth, a couple dashes aromatic bitters — and splits the whiskey base between rye and dark, aged rum. I use El Dorado 8, an aged demerara rum with an oaky, nutty, rich flavor profile, which helps offset the tangy-sweet cranberry sauce. I also add in a couple dashes of orange bitters, which help pull the other ingredients together. (If you happen to have Black Walnut bitters, you should try dropping a couple of those in too — but they’re definitely not necessary.) 

The result is a  cocktail with a dark red color, a lingering cranberry aftertaste, and a deep, satisfying base of rye and rum. (Once again, the rye-rum-brandy triangle works in our favor.) It tastes, well, like a Thanksgiving-ified Manhattan. 

Cranberry Sauce Manhattan

• 2 dashes Angostura Aromatic bitters

• 2 dashes orange bitters, such as Regan’s 

• ¼ ounce jellied cranberry sauce (see yesterday’s newsletter)

• 1 ounce sweet vermouth, preferably Carpano Antica Formula 

• 1 ounce dark aged rum, preferably El Dorado 8

• 1 ounce rye whiskey, preferably Rittenhouse 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass.

2. Add ice, then stir until thoroughly chilled, about 30 seconds. 

3. Strain into a coupe glass. 

4. Garnish with a Luxardo Maraschino cherry.

Swaps, Substitutions, and Notes

• I prefer Rittenhouse Rye for this particular drink, but you can always use another rye, like Old Overholt, if that’s what you have.

• El Dorado 8 works best in the rum slot since it’s a rum that drinks kind of like a whiskey, but since I know some of you have had trouble finding it, I can attest that this also works with something a little less robust, like Appleton Estate Signature — or, better yet, one of the Appleton expressions with an age statement.

• If you want to use Black Walnut bitters, replace the current bitters combo with: 2 dashes Fee Brothers Black Walnut, 1 dash Angostura Aromatic, 1 dash orange bitters.

• I have referred to this as a Manhattan, but in some ways it might be better understood as a Vieux Carré or a Manhattan Plus, since it splits the whiskey base and adds another ingredient (cranberry) on top of the existing structure.

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