How to Make a Harvard Cocktail, a Manhattan With Cognac Instead of Rye

Of all the Manhattan’s children—and there are many—the Harvard Cocktail is perhaps the most bizarre.

Most of them involve simple substitutions: Cut the sweetness in half and replace it with something. The Little Italy has Cynar. The Fort Point has Bénédictine. The Brooklyn cuts the sweetness almost entirely and replaces it with two things, Maraschino and Amer Picon. Sometimes you mess with the base spirit (as in, say the Vieux Carre or the Rob Roy, half Cognac for the former and all scotch for the latter) and every single one of these is world-class delicious, but in terms of architecture, it’s all pretty standard stuff.

But what can we say about the Harvard Cocktail? We know it comes to us from George J. Kappeler, published in 1895 in his book Modern American Drinks. Kappeler also invented the Widow’s Kiss and his book was recognized as one of the best of his generation, though we know almost nothing else about the man himself. We also believe that he was first to print (and was likely the inventor of) not only the Harvard Cocktail but also the Union, Smith, Princeton, and Yale Cocktails. To me, this makes it seem unlikely that the Harvard Cocktail is so named for some deep connection with the eponymous university, but rather some passing association to flatter an alumnus who’d visited the bar for a drink, much in the way a pop star will scream “I love you Cleveland!” when in Cleveland, but is unlikely to say those words in that order at any other point in her life.

In any event: The Harvard Cocktail is equal parts vermouth and spirit and starts with a pretty basic substitution of brandy for whiskey. This is simple enough, and some famous and talented bartenders just leave it at that (more on this in a moment). Doing so, however, ignores a perhaps inconvenient fact but one that makes the Harvard Cocktail so strange, and ultimately so interesting: Kappeler instructs to stir, strain into a cocktail glass, and “fill up with seltzer.” 

Fill up with seltzer! A Brandy Manhattan topped with soda water? If you don’t do a lot of cocktail drinking, you might not know that this is essentially insane. You can have a highball (spirit and soda) and you can have a vermouth and soda, but a Manhattan with seltzer is unheard of. It’s like adding chocolate sauce to a fish taco. They’re all good flavors but… would something like that work?

As mentioned, some early recipes omit the soda water entirely. Hugo Ensslin in 1917, Harry Craddock’s in 1930, and David Embury in 1948 all just ignore that bit, so to them, a Harvard Cocktail is just a Manhattan with brandy instead of whiskey. A Brandy Manhattan has gone by many other names over the years—the Flushing, the Delmonico, the Saratoga, etc—but none of those stuck, so it seems fair enough to call it a Harvard.

The problem is that a Brandy Manhattan is a fine drink, but it’s hard to make it a spectacular one. Brandy and vermouth often have a concentrated fruit sweetness in the same place on the palate, and while it’s possible to make an excellent version using specific and carefully chosen ingredients, it’s never really caught on, we suspect, because it usually just reminds people of a better drink they could be having instead (see: the Manhattan).

With sparkling water, though, the Harvard is defined. It becomes specific. It’s unclear how much seltzer Kappeler was thinking, and many modern recipes offer up 1 oz. as some kind of halfway step, but we think that when kept smaller than that—just a touch, just for texture—the carbonation lifts the drink up from the inside. It leavens it, enlivens it, puts room between the flavors where the room is needed most, and turns a derivative and mediocre drink into a fascinating and bizarre one. It’s the Manhattan’s strangest child, the one with an artistic temperament and mismatched socks, but one that deserves love all the same.

Harvard Cocktail

Add all ingredients except for soda to a mixing glass. Add ice and stir for 15 to 20 seconds and strain into a coupe. Add soda water and garnish with the oils from a lemon peel.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Ratios: The above gives you a lightly sweet, lightly bubbly, fairly delightful and totally unique cocktail, something good for before a meal. If you’re intrigued by the possibilities of a brandy Manhattan but don’t want this soda water business, just make it 2 oz. Cognac and 1 oz. vermouth, with two dashes of angostura bitters, according to the ingredient guidelines below. This is a wonderful drink, particularly with Punt e Mes (the aforementioned “carefully chosen brands”), like a Manhattan with plenty of muscle but rounder edges.

Cognac: Cognac can be young and fruity or old and rich, or, most likely, some combination or blend of the two. It might seem like younger and fruitier would be better for this drink—that what I thought would happen, anyway—but in my tests the winners were invariably older, richer Cognac. I’m finding Remy Martin 1738 to be a pretty wonderful cocktail Cognac, as is H by Hine and the Pierre Ferrand 1840.

Vermouth: This drink needs depth, and it has to come from the vermouth. If you don’t mind a touch of vanilla sweetness, Cocchi Vermouth di Torino was a lovely choice, dynamic on the palate and hits the depth at just the right place. If you prefer bitter to sweet, go with Punt e Mes, the amaro/vermouth hybrid that has a mild, dry, and chocolatey bitterness that really makes this drink shine. I thought Punt e Mes was the best by a pretty significant margin, the only reason to not insist on it is if you really don’t like bitter flavors. 

Bitters: If you’re using Punt e Mes, you don’t need to include bitters. If you’re using Cocchi Vermouth di Torino, a small dash or two of orange bitters really helps.

Soda Water: Soda, seltzer, sparkling water, mineral water, it’s all the same. Which isn’t true at all, but for this drink it’s used in such small quantities here it really doesn’t matter. My standard advice is to use something with a ton of carbonation and a bit of a salt content—Q Club is my favorite—but here, at a quarter ounce, you just need some bubbles. Use whatever you like.