Drink of the Week: Cocktail, New York Style

The Manhattan Cocktail Classic is kicking off today, and even if you can’t be there, you can join the celebration with today’s Drink of the Week: the original New York Cocktail. In our March/April 2012 issue, cocktail historian David Wondrich traces the emergence of the cocktail in New York City. “There’s something about the quick, cold snap of a well-made cocktail that fits Gotham’s pace,” he says. This recipe, he says, “is for the cocktail as it was when it first captured the hearts and livers of New York drinkers, made with either genever—Dutch gin—or French brandy, and served on ice. If you want to replace the sugar and water with a teaspoon or so of rich simple syrup (two parts sugar and one part water), stir the drink with ice and strain it into a chilled coupe, well, that’s just what New Yorkers did to it once the city started to really jump, back around 1850.”