This is How You Make a Manhattan, Jesus Christ.

The ingredients for a manhattan cocktail are simple and common and you know them already. In fact, you know how to make this drink. You’ve done it before. You can make a Manhattan in your sleep. But, do you really know how? Do you really know what it means? Do you really know how to make a Manhattan?

How You Make a Manhattan Matters

I don’t mean the whiskey. And look, there’s a recipe below that will fuck your shit, as they say, all the way up. But don’t scroll down. Don’t jump to this link. Have a modicum of forbearance. Read the instructions, because they contain your first lesson.

Patience is the first ingredient in a classic Manhattan

Start with being alive. This is important, because if you’re not alive, you can’t mix a good drink. And no, I’m not talking about actually being alive. Let’s not be pedantic. Look at your bartender. She’s alive. Here’s how you know.

Her name is Ruby.

She wakes up every day at noon, makes an insanely good cup of coffee, the preparation of which is a carefully guarded science, then takes the blue line downtown to go to work behind the rail of a single-name bar with a reputation for being ever so slightly gilded. You’ll want to dress up.

A Manhattan is about class

On that train, she reads a book about Bob Dylan with an unlit cigarette hanging off her lip. She gets off the train and drops that book into her satchel (only old ladies carry purses, she will tell you one day). She whips out lipstick the color of coagulated blood sprayed across a dive bar mirror. She gets into work and morphs into a machine of efficiency and grace. Throughout the night, she pours a whale’s heart worth of booze, fends off gropers with a discreetly savage snarl, and manages the bar backs like a drill sergeant librarian.

Timing is everything when it comes to making a Manhattan

You’ve been camped at the far end of the bar for a half an hour. Your crew has descended into a clench of madness, all four of them rattling off sports statistics and conspiracy theories about Elon Musk and you can’t, not for a single second further, countenance their dipsomaniacal Neanderthalic horse manure—or their fireball shots.

But the bartender, Jesus, she’s a wonder. You never expected that you would find grace in a top-shelf dive bar. You expect to find this level of refinement and clemency at the ballet. You can’t help yourself. You want to see her work up close.

So you order a Manhattan and here’s what happens.

She comes over and she looks at you for a nano-second longer than a glance, but it’s not because she’s into you. I mean, maybe she is, but you’ll never know and this glance isn’t about that. This is an undertaker’s take.

What she weighs in that moment is all the luggage she’s ticked off since you walked in. She saw you roll your eyes when one of your boys called her sugar. She watched you listen, like really listen, while Sherry went through her whole day at work in real time, which you could not care less about, but you know she needs it and she’s a friend which is what the bartender measured.

She took note of your simple order when you walked in: a halfway decent whiskey, ordered clearly, no banter. She has taken due regard of your patience, how you waited until she caught your eye, then waited until she raised her eyebrow before you did anything because you’re in her house. Then you discreetly tapped your glass. Once. You know how to order a drink at a crowded bar and that has shifted you into a different taxonomy with Ruby.

Use good whiskey

She steps up on a stool to reach the good stuff. She reaches under the bar for her own bottle of sweet vermouth she won’t let the other bartenders touch. She pulls a crystal mixing chalice out of the fridge. She fills it with ice, and pours in the ingredients. She stirs this Manhattan, she doesn’t shake it. That would abuse the spirits. No, she stirs and lets it sit for half a second while she pulls a deeply frosted coupe, drops a luxuriously syrupy Luxardo cherry in the bottom, sets the glass in front of you, then pours. You don’t say a word. Neither does she. But she pours a thin sliver of it into a rocks glass, picks it up, and you clink and she looks you in the eye and says: you come here often. It’s not a question.

Then she walks away.

How to Make a Manhattan, Jesus Christ

Use a good rye. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it has to be great. It’s carrying a whole drink with just a little help from the Vermouth. It’s doing a days work. But this isn’t an Old Fashioned. It’s boozy, but it’s classy boozy. Old Overholt is fine if that’s all the bar has, but if you have a choice, if your bar understands whiskey, level up a little. Here’s ours:

All American Whiskey Manhattan Cocktail

2.5 ounces of Journeyman Last Feather Rye because oh my god.

.5 ounces of Cocci sweet vermouth because also oh my god.

a dash or two of Angustura bitters.

A luxardo cherry in the bottom of a coupe for a garnish.

Add all the ingredients to a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir gently until it is very. very cold. Take your time. Think about Ruby. Strain into a chilled coupe glass.

Say something cool.