Can I use bourbon instead of rye?

You can, and the world will keep turning, but you will lose the point. Rye's pepper and spine push back against the Cynar and the maraschino, which is what keeps the drink crisp instead of syrupy. Bourbon's softer sweetness lets those elements gang up and turn it cloying. If rye is all you can find at home, fine, but a bone-dry, high-rye whiskey is the right call here.

What is Cynar and do I really need it?

Cynar is an Italian amaro built around artichoke, which sounds like a punchline and tastes like a savory, herbal bitterness with a faint cola darkness underneath. It is the engine of this drink. Without it you have a slightly odd dry Manhattan. With it you have the Bensonhurst. There is no clean one-for-one swap, so if you are serious about the cocktail, buy the bottle. It earns its shelf space across a lot of stirred drinks.

Why dry vermouth in something that looks like a Manhattan?

Because the dry vermouth is doing the structural work a Martini would ask of it, keeping the body taut and letting the bitter and floral accents speak. Sweet vermouth would smother all of it under caramel weight. Swapping to dry is precisely the move that pulls this drink out of the Manhattan's shadow and over into Martini territory, even with a cherry sitting at the bottom of the glass.

Bensonhurst: The Manhattan That Outgrew the Old Neighborhood

Somewhere in the early 2000s, a bartender in Brooklyn looked at the Manhattan, that warm and unkillable warhorse, and decided to drag it somewhere colder and stranger. The result is the Bensonhurst. Rye holds the line. Dry vermouth, Cynar, and a barspoon of maraschino do the rest, and what comes out is a drink that tastes like a Manhattan that read a few books and got opinions. Lean, bitter at the edges, and built for people who find the original a touch too cozy.

2 ozRye Whiskey

0.5 ozDry Vermouth

0.5 ozCynar

1 barspoonMaraschino Liqueur

Garnish: Brandied cherry

Stirred, always, and not negotiable. This is a spirit-forward drink with zero citrus and nothing to shake awake, so you stir it over good clean ice until it is properly cold and properly diluted, then strain into a chilled coupe. Shaking would aerate it and cloud it and bruise the whole point. The proportions reward precision because the supporting cast is loud. Half an ounce of Cynar brings a vegetal artichoke bitterness that can run away from you, and the maraschino is a barspoon for a reason, since that liqueur turns a drink into cough syrup the second you get generous with it. Dry vermouth keeps the body crisp where sweet vermouth would have rounded it off. The brandied cherry on top is not decoration. It is a sweet, dark counterweight you eat at the end to close the loop.

Strip away the bitter trimmings and the Bensonhurst is a Martini at the bone. The Martini family is defined by one simple relationship, a base spirit married to aromatized wine, and everything else is commentary. Here the base is rye and the wine is dry vermouth, which is the exact backbone of a dozen cousins you already know. The Bamboo and the Adonis run sherry against vermouth. The Bobby Burns and the Bijou wire Scotch and gin into the same circuit. The Algonquin is rye and dry vermouth with pineapple, practically a sibling who moved away. What makes the Bensonhurst feel like a Manhattan is the rye and the cherry, but the architecture underneath is pure Martini, a strong spirit given shape and seasoning by fortified wine. The Cynar and maraschino are accents bolted onto that frame, the way the Boulevardier or the Corpse Reviver #1 layer character onto a recognizable spine. Understand the spine and the drink stops being a novelty and starts being a logical move.

The Bensonhurst comes out of Pegu Club in New York, credited to bartender Chad Solomon around 2006, and named for the South Brooklyn neighborhood with the kind of straight-faced affection that working bartenders reserve for places that are not glamorous. It belongs to a small wave of modern riffs that treated the Manhattan as a starting grammar rather than a finished sentence. Some of those experiments were precious nonsense. This one stuck, because it actually improves on a specific problem. The classic Manhattan can sit heavy and sweet, especially late in a night, and the Bensonhurst answers that by trading sweet vermouth for dry and smuggling in Cynar to scrub the palate with bitterness. The maraschino does the sly work, a funky floral sweetness that fills the gap the sweet vermouth left behind without ever announcing itself. The whole thing reads as a Manhattan in silhouette and tastes like something more grown up, more bracing, less interested in comforting you. That is the appeal. It respects the original enough to argue with it. Order one made by someone who measures, drink it cold, eat the cherry, and you understand why this little Brooklyn footnote outlived most of the cocktails it was invented alongside.

Open the Bensonhurst recipe card on Speed Pour

Related drinks

FAQ

Can I use bourbon instead of rye?: You can, and the world will keep turning, but you will lose the point. Rye's pepper and spine push back against the Cynar and the maraschino, which is what keeps the drink crisp instead of syrupy. Bourbon's softer sweetness lets those elements gang up and turn it cloying. If rye is all you can find at home, fine, but a bone-dry, high-rye whiskey is the right call here.
What is Cynar and do I really need it?: Cynar is an Italian amaro built around artichoke, which sounds like a punchline and tastes like a savory, herbal bitterness with a faint cola darkness underneath. It is the engine of this drink. Without it you have a slightly odd dry Manhattan. With it you have the Bensonhurst. There is no clean one-for-one swap, so if you are serious about the cocktail, buy the bottle. It earns its shelf space across a lot of stirred drinks.
Why dry vermouth in something that looks like a Manhattan?: Because the dry vermouth is doing the structural work a Martini would ask of it, keeping the body taut and letting the bitter and floral accents speak. Sweet vermouth would smother all of it under caramel weight. Swapping to dry is precisely the move that pulls this drink out of the Manhattan's shadow and over into Martini territory, even with a cherry sitting at the bottom of the glass.