The unlikely true story of dan and the creation of the world's greatest Manhattan cocktail.
Dan is a man of the world. Sophisticated. Well-traveled. Erudite. Insanely (he would call it “appropriately”) picky. Blessed with a taste for the finer things and, happily, the means to achieve them.
He's also possessed of just enough self-assurance (some would call it “arrogance”) to take a cocktail that's been around since 1882 and make it, in his words, perfect.
What kind of a person even thinks that's possible? Was Dan in the liquor business? No. Owned a distillery? Nope. Cousin in the business? No, no and no. But he's been handing bartenders a card with his own Manhattan recipe on it for years and saying, “I want you to do it exactly like this.” Just think about that: he literally would hand them a pre-printed card with the exact measures of rye, vermouth, bitters, cherry and orange that he specified.
Who does that?!
Dan does. And, in my experience, only Dan does. As I said, Dan's picky. In his view he just wanted them to get his order right.
Still, and amazingly, even when he made the highly unusual (some would say strangely, weirdly, wildly eccentric) gesture of handing the bartender his exact specifications — Bond has nothing on Dan — the results were, to put it charitably, uneven. So he made his own, first for him, now for the world, combin- ing the finest rye whiskey, vermouth and bitters in exactly the right proportions, packaging it in a custom bottle reminiscent of a classic cocktail shaker, and distributing it in very limited quantities to a few select bars and retailers.