Deshler

I'm going through the PDT cocktail book this month whenever I decide it's time for a cocktail at home.  My generaly choice involves flipping through the book until i come upon a recipe which I happen to have all the ingredients for and seems like a good winter drink.

Having gotten through the A's and B's over the last couple weeks (resulting in ~4 cocktails I wanted to make) I flipped through to the D's and came upon the Deshler, a drink credited to Hugo Enslin, author of Recipes for Mixing Drinks (1916).  The drink, named after period lightweight boxer Dave Deshler, is a Dubonnet based variant of the Manhattan.

Deshler
1.5 oz Rye
.75 oz Dubbonet Rouge
.25 oz Cointreau
2 Dashes Peychaud's Bitters
Stir in a mixing glass, strain, and garnish with an orange twist.

So, no pictures of this one, seeing as I drank it with dinner before I remembered.  The drink was quite good, although it really didn't compare to the elegant simplicity of a perfectly proportioned Manhattan made with quality ingredients.  That being said the rye mellowed the quinine notes of the Dubonnet (which have offended my taste in previous cocktails) and stood above all the sugar present in this drink.  Overall it tastes like a Manhattan with cointreau, except you also can't really taste the exact elements of the whiskey itself; they are masked by the other ingredients.  Whereas in a truly good Manhattan the vermouth works to highlight the chosen whiskey.

I'm most certainly making this again, but I'm never going to be using any extravagantly good rye in it (whereas a Willet Rye Manhattan is, at the moment, one of the most tantalizing things I've ever tasted).