The One Drink and the No-Drink
The Black Staircase: Coffee, Cherry, and Fernet Manhattan
Fernet is measured in teaspoons for the same reason certain paints are sold in very small tins.
Serve alongside
Dark chocolate with sea salt, or a plain almond biscotti. Fernet leaves the mouth cold and minty, coffee leaves it dry, and between them there is very little room for food that is not bitter, salty, or crisp.
Tools
Mixing glass, or the sturdiest pint glass you own. Bar spoon, or a chopstick and lowered expectations. Jigger. Julep strainer. A small jar and a coffee filter or a square of paper towel, for the grounds. Measuring spoons that include a real teaspoon — this drink is decided at that scale.
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Rye whiskey (bourbon, for a rounder drink) · sweet vermouth · coffee liqueur · fernet (Cynar for earthier, Averna for cola-and-burnt-orange, Braulio for alpine) · cherry bitters · brandied cherry · this morning’s spent coffee grounds
Magic
Steep the used grounds in the vermouth. A tablespoon of wet, already-brewed grounds into 3 ounces of sweet vermouth, twelve minutes, then filtered out completely. Spent grounds have given up their sugar and acid to the pot already; what is left is roast, cocoa and tannin, which is precisely the part of coffee this drink wants and precisely the part coffee liqueur buries in sugar. Not feeling brave? Skip it and add one dash of chocolate bitters instead.
Gotcha
Fifteen minutes is the cliff. At twelve the vermouth reads as dark fruit and roast; at eighteen it is ashy and gripping at the back of the tongue, and there is no ingredient that walks that back. Set a timer, and use grounds from today, not the ones that have been sitting damp since Sunday.
The coffee liqueur is the weakest ingredient in this drink, and it stays anyway. Every bottle on the shelf is built around sugar, which is why a quarter ounce is the ceiling — more and the whole thing slides toward an espresso martini that took a wrong turn. What I actually want from coffee here is roast and a little tannin, and there is a cheaper, better source of both sitting in the filter basket.
The grounds, and what they are for
Brewing pulls the sweetness, the fruit and most of the acid out of a coffee ground and leaves behind the roasted, cocoa-bitter, faintly tannic remainder. Fresh grounds in vermouth give you a muddy iced coffee. Spent grounds give you shadow. Stir a tablespoon of them into 3 ounces of sweet vermouth in a jar, cover it, let it sit twelve minutes on the counter, then pour it through a coffee filter and use it as your vermouth from then on. It keeps a week in the fridge, same as the vermouth would have.
The coffee liqueur still goes in. It brings body and a rounded sweetness the grounds cannot. The difference is that it is no longer the only thing carrying the coffee idea, so a quarter ounce is genuinely enough.
Build
One drink, seven minutes. Chilled coupe or Nick & Nora.
- 1 3/4 ounces rye whiskey
- 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth, coffee-steeped
- 1/4 ounce coffee liqueur
- 1 teaspoon fernet
- 1 dash cherry bitters
- 1 brandied cherry
Chill the glass first, before you touch anything else. Combine all the liquid in a mixing glass packed with solid ice — solid meaning cubes with corners, not the cloudy pellets from the door of the freezer, which dissolve into the drink while you are still deciding how you feel about it. Stir twenty to twenty-five seconds. Strain into the cold glass. Garnish with one brandied cherry, drained on a paper towel first, sitting at the bottom or on a short pick.
Drain the cherry properly. An undrained cherry brings a teaspoon of syrup with it, and that syrup keeps sweetening the drink for the entire time it takes you to finish it.
Where it goes wrong
Under-stirred, the rye stays hot and separate and the fernet stands out front shouting. Over-stirred, the coffee note goes thin and the finish shortens. Twenty-five seconds is the outer edge. If you are unsure, taste it off the bar spoon at twenty — a spirit-forward drink is one of the few you can check mid-build without ruining.
And check the vermouth. A bottle that has lived on a warm shelf since spring is oxidized, and in a drink this exposed you will taste it immediately: flat in the middle, sour on the end. Vermouth is wine. It goes in the fridge, and it is finished within about a month whether or not you have found a use for it.
For eight people
Steep 8 ounces of vermouth with three tablespoons of grounds, same twelve minutes, filter, then combine 14 ounces rye, 6 ounces of that vermouth, 2 ounces coffee liqueur, 8 teaspoons fernet and 8 dashes cherry bitters. It will hold three days in the fridge. Stir 2 3/4 ounces per drink with ice and strain.
Do not pre-dilute and freeze this one. The point of the batch is that you stir each glass in twenty seconds while still talking to whoever is nearest, which is the whole argument for batching in the first place. Eight small dark glasses on a tray is more atmospheric than any amount of equipment.
Zero-proof
This converts better than most spirit-forward drinks, because what it is really made of is bitterness, tannin, roast and dark fruit — none of which need alcohol. Stir strong black tea with a nonalcoholic red aperitif, a teaspoon of coffee syrup and a few drops of alcohol-free aromatic bitters, over plenty of ice, and finish with the same cherry. It will not impersonate rye and should not try. It will hold the same shape.
Alongside
Salt and bitterness, not sugar. Aged cheddar, roasted hazelnuts, charred mushrooms on toast, coffee-rubbed beef, something cured and thin. Dark chocolate is obvious and also correct, provided it has some bitterness of its own. A sour cherry tart works. A frosted cake does not — the drink already has vermouth and liqueur in it, and it wants a partner with an edge.
Serve it after dark in the smallest stemmed glass you own, and resist the coffee bean garnish. Three beans floating on a cocktail look like someone emptied a desk drawer into it.
Part of Drinks & Zero-Proof.
