Black Manhattan

Rye, Averna amaro, and bitters—a sophisticated, herbal twist on the classic Manhattan.

The Black Manhattan was created in 2005 by Todd Smith at Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco. The bar ran on a reservation-only, no-printed-menu model that pushed its bartenders to invent rather than recite. Smith's idea was simple: swap the sweet vermouth for Averna amaro, an Italian digestif from Sicily with notes of herbal bitterness, caramel, and dried citrus peel. The drink became the bar's signature and spread through craft cocktail culture over the following decade.

The structural logic holds up cleanly. Amaro and vermouth occupy similar territory in a cocktail: both bring sweetness, botanical complexity, and lower proof to balance a base spirit. But where vermouth reads as wine-adjacent and slightly floral, Averna goes darker, more rooted, with a finish that lingers. The result is a Manhattan that tastes like itself, but lower and slower, with more going on in the back half of each sip.