Capitol – Recipe from David Embury’s ‘The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks’

Sweet Manhattan with a dash of Angostura and 1 or 2 dashes of Cointreau to each drink. Stir.

Stumbling across drinks like this late at night is my favourite part of this challenge, its close enough to a Manhattan to make it practically indistinguishable, I love Manhattans, I have all the ingredients at home and it’s a stirred drink so rigorous shaking isn’t going to wake my sleeping wife.

The upside is I can basically have exactly the type of drink I want, as opposed to being forced into a drink of necessity, which has happened several times in places with limited resources. The downside is that it doesn’t really feel like a different drink. I quickly come to realise that a lot of these cocktails have ingredients that when used in the recommended proportions have little or no impact o the overall drink. I used 5ml of Cointreau in this, substantially more than what I’d refer to as a dash, and I could barely taste it through the Italian and Bourbon.

So it’s a great drink, but so is a Manhattan, so no real new ground broken I’m afraid.