Every whiskey roundup eventually says the same thing: "beyond the Manhattan and Old-Fashioned." Punch's latest roundup of easy whiskey cocktails says exactly that, then lists a Fernet-and-bourbon Stinger and an amaro-laced Manhattan riff called Yesterday, Today and Amaro. Fine drinks. But the bench goes deeper than one new issue's worth of recipes, and some of the best stock is sitting in cocktail books nobody reads anymore.
Here's what's actually worth mixing if you're done ordering the same five drinks.
1. The Up To Date — a sherry Manhattan that predates the trend by a century
Rye, Oloroso sherry, Grand Marnier, Angostura. That's it. According to Difford's Guide, the recipe was first published in Hugo Ensslin's 1916 book Recipes For Mixed Drinks — which means the sherry-cocktail "movement" bartenders keep announcing as a discovery is, at minimum, 110 years old. Swap the sweet vermouth for Oloroso and you lose the syrupy weight a Manhattan sometimes carries and gain something drier, nuttier, with a citrus snap from the Grand Marnier that a standard Manhattan never gets near. It drinks lighter than its spec suggests. Nobody orders it because nobody's heard of it, which is the entire premise of this newsletter.
To try it: Lustau's Oloroso Don Nuño is the sherry named in the recipe — specialty wine or spirits shop, roughly $20-25, not hard to find if your shop stocks sherry seriously. Grand Marnier is everywhere, gas-station liquor stores included.
2. The Desk Job — proof the Manhattan chassis still takes new parts
Swap rye for rum, vermouth for amaro, and add a second amaro for structure. Difford's Guide credits the build — Caribbean blended rum, overproof pot-still rum, Cynar, and Punt e Mes — to Donny Clutterbuck at Cure in Rochester, New York, circa 2015. It's a decade old, not disputed-provenance old, but it's a clean example of the Manhattan's real architecture: a base spirit, a fortified wine, and a bittering agent, arranged to let each do one job. Change the spirit, change the character entirely, keep the drink recognizable. That's the whole trick, and it's older than any of the three bottles in the glass.
To try it: Cynar and Punt e Mes are both widely available at any decent liquor store, usually $20-30 each. The high-ester pot-still rum is the harder get — specialty shop or online spirits retailer territory, not out of production, just thin on shelf space.
3. The Current Crop Knows the Trick, Even If It Doesn't Say So
Yesterday, Today and Amaro, from Punch's current roundup, runs the same play as the Up To Date and the Desk Job: keep the base spirit, swap the modifier, let a bittersweet liqueur do structural work a plain vermouth can't. The magazine frames it as a modern easy-drink option. It's really just the Manhattan's 110-year-old logic wearing a 2026 label.
The Pattern Worth Noticing
Imbibe's conversation with Kenta Goto and Noah Rothbaum about their new book framed good bartending as process — painstaking repetition until a build is right, not chasing novelty for its own sake. That's the throughline here, too. The Up To Date isn't obscure because it failed. It's obscure because nobody bothered to put it back on a menu, while Cure's rum riff got picked up because somebody tried it a decade after the fact and it worked.
What to Watch
If a bar near you runs a "classics revisited" section, ask what they're actually revisiting. A Manhattan built with sherry instead of vermouth is not a gimmick — it's a century-old spec that happens to still be correct. Order it before you order whatever they're calling innovative this month.