Tipperary

While the Tipperary hasn’t taken over the hearts and minds of the public or seen a ton of menu time, this classic cocktail has drifted in and out of bars in the back pockets of bartenders for decades. Essentially, it’s an Irish whiskey manhattan with a healthy heaping of green Chartreuse: familiar in form but unusual enough that no other spin on the most well-riffed classic gets close.

The drink shows up in New York bartender Hugo Enslinn’s 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks looking pretty much exactly as we know it today. While an equal-parts manhattan looks a little out of place in the cocktail landscape of the 21st century, once you realize that in this instance Chartreuse—the herbaceous French liqueur with a powerful punch and great historical legacy—forms part of the base of this drink, the Tipperary begins to look quite modern. You don’t often see a whole ounce of the bracing green spirit in old drinks, but the Tipperary plays its bold flavors (a heady mix of gentian, sage, vanilla, among others) right into Irish whiskey, often a leaner and quieter spirit than the American rye we find in many classic manhattans.

Many have attempted to rejigger this classic to rein in those big flavors and bring it closer in line with the velvety and rich manhattans that have remained ever more popular (usually by upping the whiskey and seriously toning down the Chartreuse), but to do so curbs some of the uniqueness that makes this drink so memorable to begin with. 

Just don’t get this drink confused with the identically named but wholly unrelated cocktail found in books like Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails and The Cafe Royale Cocktail Book. That gin cocktail with vermouth, orange juice, and mint is miles away from this bold, herbaceous manhattan.