Mammoth Manhattan, Northern Manhattan, and the Bellaire Cocktail



Happy New Year! We celebrated the start to 2019 with a blanket of fresh snow in Northern Michigan and some cocktails made with local spirits. We are normally “Up North” during the summer months, but decided to spend a week in Charlevoix during the holiday season. The result is this blog post packed with three recipes (and some travel tips if you find yourself in this part of the world).

 As regular readers of our blog know, we often sing the praises of local craft distillers, and when we are on vacation we typically have more time to hunt down and visit new distilleries. This past summer we visited Mammoth Distilling’s wonderful tasting room in the tiny town of Central Lake, Michigan. Thanks to Mammoth, Central Lake is the smallest town (population 936) in Michigan to have its own distillery. The tasting room happens to be next door to another Central Lake landmark, Bachman’s Store – a classic 5 and dime that hasn’t changed very much since it was opened in 1942. We highly recommend a visit to both.

Mammoth Distilling - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist

We made it back to Mammoth during this winter trip and picked up a couple of new bottles. One of their popular spirits is Cherry Bounce – a tart cherry liqueur with some subtle spice notes. We gave it a try in our Manhattan recipe in place of the sweet vermouth (alongside Mammoth’s Bourbon) and were really pleased with the end product (once it was garnished with our favorite cocktail cherry produced by another local distiller Traverse City Whiskey Co.). 

Fresh snow made for a great photo backdrop, and the Cocktail Artist did a quick watercolor of the snow surrounding birch trees outside the windows while we enjoyed the chilled cocktail from the comfort of the indoors.

The Mammoth Manhattan in the snow

Mammoth Manhattan

2 ounces Mammoth Distilling Woolly Bourbon
1 ounce Mammoth Distilling Cherry Bounce
1 ounce Vermouth Drapo Bianco
dash of Orange Bitters

Add all ingredients to a cocktail mixing glass with ice cubes and stir briskly. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe and garnish with a cocktail cherry (Traverse City Whiskey Co. Cocktail Cherry).


After our visit to Central Lake we passed through the village of Bellaire (population 1,067) where a popular craft brewery and meadery are located on the main street. We continued on to Torch Lake Cellars – a local family-owned vineyard and winery with a lovely tasting room. We enjoyed chatting with the owner and admiring the views from the building’s lookout reached via a handcrafted spiral staircase. We left with a couple of bottles of wine – including their Blackberry Bourbon (a blackberry wine aged in a bourbon barrel).

We didn’t experiment with the Blackberry Bourbon until we were back at home and a snowstorm in the District of Columbia reminded us of our recent time in Michigan and of the bottles we brought back home. The blackberry wine works really well in a Manhattan (especially with the addition of a dash of Benedictine), but we really liked it in a variation of the Deschler Cocktail where we used it in place of Dubonnet Rouge. We’ve christened this recipe the Bellaire (the name of the village that lies between Mammoth Distillery and Torch Lake Cellars). Both recipes using the blackberry wine are posted below along with some Cocktail Artist original watercolors recently done during our winter Northern Michigan trip. 

Cheers to the New Year and to new cocktails!

The Bellaire Cocktail

Bellaire

2 ounces Whiskey (Mammoth Distilling Michigan Whiskey)
1 ¼  ounce Blackberry Wine (Torch Lake Cellars Blackberry Bourbon)
½  ounce Cointreau
3 dashes of Creole Bitters (The Bitter Truth)
Orange peel
Lemon peel
1 ounce club soda

Place a piece of orange peel and lemon peel in a cocktail shaker and add the Creole bitters. Using a muddling tool mash the bitters and peels to release the oils. Add ice cubes and remaining ingredients and shake for 10 – 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or goblet and top with club soda. Garnish with a lemon twist and a blackberry.

 
Mammoth Manhattan and ingredients

Northern Manhattan

2 ounces Rye (Far North Spirits Roknar Rye)
1 ounce Blackberry Wine (Torch Lake Cellars Blackberry Bourbon)
1 ounce Blanc Vermouth (Dolin)
¼ ounce Benedictine
2 dashes of Orange Bitters (Scrappy’s Bitters)

Add all ingredients to a cocktail mixing glass with ice cubes and stir briskly. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe and garnish with an orange twist.

Lake House - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist
Birch Trees in the Snow - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist



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