When the Fourth Regiment debuted on the menu at DrinkWell in Austin this 12 months, it wasn’t out of the blue for the bar’s program, which is deeply rooted within the cocktail canon and at all times incorporates a whiskey-based basic. However what bar supervisor Caer Maiko reveres in regards to the Manhattan variation is its sudden taste profile and lightweight contact, regardless of its spirit-forward development.
Towards the top of the nineteenth century, the mix of whiskey, vermouth and bitters was proliferating inside cocktail tradition. Drinks that adopted this development weren’t all known as “Manhattans”—in any case, the Manhattan was nonetheless in its infancy. Amongst them was the Fourth Regiment.
Initially printed in an 1889 pamphlet known as 282 Combined Drinks from the Non-public Data of a Bartender of the Olden Days, the Fourth Regiment requires equal elements rye whiskey and candy vermouth, dashes of Peychaud’s, orange and celery bitters and a lemon twist garnish. The recipe additionally seems in notable turn-of-the-century bar manuals like Applegreen’s Bar E book and Jacques Straub’s Drinks.
However the Fourth Regiment didn’t keep put stateside. In some way, within the many years following its invention, the drink traveled midway internationally. The globetrotting author Charles H. Baker Jr. encountered it in Mumbai (then referred to as Bombay), the place a British naval officer he’d befriended combined one for him. In his 1931 e book, The Gentleman’s Companion, Baker describes the Fourth Regiment as “merely a Manhattan Cocktail made in 4 oz dimension, spiced with 1 sprint every of celery, Angostura and orange bitters.”
In line with Maiko, it’s the celery that units the drink aside. “I really like how only a couple dashes of celery bitters are capable of utterly push what’s often a really fruit- and baking spice–ahead cocktail right into a barely savory, contemporary and inexperienced area,” she says. However as a substitute of utilizing normal celery bitters, Maiko reached for a concentrated celery shrub for its acidic edge.
A part of the Fourth Regiment’s attract lies in how the rye interacts with the celery and vermouth. “[Rye] pairs effectively with caraway and has these greener, grittier herb notes,” in line with Maiko. Particularly, DrinkWell requires a bonded rye that may stand as much as the numerous quantity of vermouth within the recipe. That being stated, she asserts {that a} lighter vermouth is the most suitable choice for the Fourth Regiment. To bolster the cocktail’s savory notes, she selected Martini & Rossi for its hardy herb flavors, pointing particularly to the presence of oregano and thyme.
And whereas the unique spec requires a lemon twist, and Baker’s recipe cites a lime twist, at DrinkWell, the cocktail will get an orange garnish as a substitute—a refined nod to the orange bitters from the unique spec which might be omitted on the bar.
For Maiko, the Fourth Regiment is an easygoing choice for visitors who need one thing that reads as stirred and powerful however is definitely lighter on its toes resulting from its equal-parts development, excellent for this transitional time of 12 months. “If I had been to have a spirit-forward cocktail, however I’m sitting in a inexperienced backyard on a heat summer season day,” she says, “that is that model of a Manhattan.”
