Cocktail recipe
Rob Roy
A Scotch Manhattan with a brooding malt edge and a velvet vermouth finish.
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) blended Scotch whisky
- 30 ml (1 oz) sweet red vermouth
- 2 dashes aromatic bitters
- Garnish: 1 brandied cherry
Preparation
Stir Scotch, vermouth and bitters over hard ice until the drink feels silk-smooth and properly cold. Strain into a chilled small stemmed glass and add a single cherry. Avoid an orange garnish that would compete with the Scotch’s cereal and smoke notes.
Glassware
Chilled Nick & Nora or coupe
History
The usual account places a Scotch-based Manhattan at New York’s Waldorf Hotel in 1894, named for the popular *Rob Roy* operetta that opened on Broadway that October. The link is plausible but not the whole story: cocktail historian David Wondrich identified an 1873 newspaper interview in which New York bartender Edward F. Barry discussed a cocktail called Rob Roy. The earlier drink’s formula and its connection to the later Scotch-and-vermouth standard need separate treatment. Thus the operetta story explains the late-nineteenth-century drink’s popularity better than it proves the name’s first invention.
Mixology View
Our 2:1 specification lets Scotch lead without losing the Manhattan family resemblance. We tell the 1894 Waldorf story as an influential attribution, not an undisputed first use of the name.