Was the Manhattan Cocktail Invented for Jennie Churchill?

The story as it is usually told

In the popular version, the Manhattan was born on December 29, 1874, at New York's Manhattan Club, at a banquet honoring Samuel J. Tilden, New York's Democratic governor-elect. Jennie Jerome, the American-born wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, is said to have hosted the party, and the club's whiskey, vermouth and bitters aperitif became the house drink.

According to the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, the dinner story first appeared in print in 1945, in a column by Patrick Murphy, who got it from bar-trade journalist Ed Gibbs. Jennie arrived in 1950, when Walter Winchell's column added that the club had been her family's home. Retellings since have moved her from guest to inspiration.

Why it cannot be true

Start with the calendar. The International Churchill Society records that Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on November 30, 1874. A woman who had given birth in England four weeks earlier was not hosting a dinner in New York, a point drinks historian David Wondrich made.

Then the address. In 1874 the Manhattan Club met in the Benkard mansion on Fifth Avenue at 15th Street. It did not take over Leonard Jerome's mansion on Madison Square until 1899, 25 years after the banquet. And while newspapers did report a reception for Tilden on that date, the Oxford Companion says none of them mention a new drink.

So who did invent the Manhattan?

Nobody can prove it. The club itself may still have a claim: in 1889 a Boston bartender said the drink started at the Manhattan Club, and the New York Sun said the same in 1891. Those are reports from years later, not a record of the night.

The lead drinks historians find most plausible comes from William F. Mulhall, head bartender at the Hoffman House in the 1880s. Writing in the early 1920s, he said the Manhattan was invented in the 1860s by a man named Black who kept a place on Broadway just below Houston Street. Wondrich later found an 1881 sale notice for a Broadway bar called the Manhattan Inn, run by a George Black who had died that year. It fits, but it rests on one man's memory from about 40 years on.

What the earliest Manhattans looked like

The first known mention in print is a syndicated New York column from September 1882, describing a new mix of whiskey, vermouth and bitters that went by several names. Full recipes appeared in three bar books in 1884. Those early versions often used equal parts whiskey and vermouth, called for rye or bourbon, and were finished with lemon peel; the cherry shows up around 1891.

Our Manhattan uses the modern 2 to 1 ratio of rye to sweet vermouth with two dashes of bitters, stirred and served up. Take away the vermouth and add sugar, and you are back at its parent, the old fashioned whiskey cocktail.

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