Take Manhattan Upside Down for Next Zoom Happy Hour
If social distancing taught me anything, it’s that I love bars more than alcohol. I miss sitting in a room that I don’t pay rent for, sipping a cold martini that I don’t mix and listening to music I don’t choose. I think I miss the transfer of control.
But like most people, I have found a way to entertain friends and colleagues by drinking drinks while FaceTiming, Zooming, or otherwise interacting with others via email. The problem, however, is that without the rhythm provided by the atmosphere of the bar – waiting for an order, waiting for a drink to be mixed – and someone else offering you water, things can change very quickly if you’re not careful. While I can start my virtual happy hour with a properly measured and watered-down martini, I’ll end it with a glass full of gin, salted juice, and ice.
This is where inverted cocktails come in handy. The premise is simple: you take a classic vermouth cocktail – like a martini or a Manhattan – and change the proportions. Instead of two ounces of gin or whiskey and one ounce of vermouth, you now drink twice as much vermouth and half the alcohol. But – and this is important – it still feels, looks and drinks like a cocktail from a whole ass.
If you don’t think you like vermouth, it could be because you didn’t store it properly (in the refrigerator), didn’t use it on time (for a couple of months), or fell for macho rhetoric against vermouth. the dry martini enthusiasts of the 1990s. Vermouth is very good, especially if you like the likes of Punt e Mes or Carpano Antica Formula.
You can flip a lot of classic cocktails this way, but we’re going to focus on Manhattan, mainly because I thought it was called the “flipped man,” which is funny to me. To make it you will need:
- 2 ounces sweet vermouth
- 30 grams of rye whiskey
- 2 drops of Angostura bitter
Pour everything into a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until very cold. Strain into the compartment and garnish with a strip of orange peel, if you have one. Repeat as long as you participate in this Zoom call.