A rum Manhattan: aged dark rum, sweet vermouth and chocolate bitters, stirred and served straight up. Named for Papa George — George Papagno, the Navy veteran this whole company was built to honor.
Ingredients:
- 2 oz Bombarda Falconet Midnight
- 3/4 oz Cocchi Vermouth di Torino
- 2 dashes chocolate bitters
- Maraschino cherry and an orange zest twist, to garnish
Method of Attack:
- Fill a mixing glass halfway with ice. Add the rum, vermouth and chocolate bitters.
- Stir furiously for at least thirty seconds. This is not a drink to rush — the dilution is part of the recipe, not an accident of it.
- Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
- Add the cherry and garnish with an orange zest twist, expressed over the surface first.
About This Recipe:
My father, George Papagno, served in the United States Navy. He came home, raised a family, and lived to be almost 102 years old. For thirty-nine of those years he and I shared rum together — bottles I carried back from every trip I ever took through the Caribbean and Latin America.
Bombarda exists because of him. This one carries his name.
The Manhattan is the right shape for it: spirit, vermouth, bitters, stirred, no juice, no shaking, nothing to hide behind. A drink for sitting down with, which is how we drank most of those bottles.
Why this rum:
A Manhattan is a stirred drink with no citrus and no sugar of its own beyond the vermouth. That means the spirit is fully exposed — every bit of sweetness in the glass either came from the vermouth or came in the bottle.
Falconet Midnight is aged 8 to 15 years, with the oak and dried fruit that meets sweet vermouth the way a rye whiskey does. It carries no added sugar, no caramel colorant and no chill filtration, so the drink lands dry and structured rather than syrupy.
The chocolate bitters are the detail that makes it. Chocolate and aged rum share a great deal — both come out of the same climate, both carry that dark, roasted, slightly bitter edge — and two dashes pull the whole drink together.
Battle Notes:
Open your vermouth, refrigerate it, and use it within a month. Oxidised vermouth is the most common reason a Manhattan tastes dull at home, and in a three-ingredient drink there is nowhere for it to hide.
Victori Spolia.
More on the man and the brand in our story. For another Falconet classic, see the Old Fashioned 24 Pounder.
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