mulberry bend

1 1/2 oz Rocktown Rye
1/2 oz Dolin Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz Cynar
1/2 oz Rothman & Winter Apricot Liqueur
2 dash Regan's Orange Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with orange oil from a twist.
For my drink of the day at Loyal Nine two Sundays ago, I took the Rocktown Rye Whiskey theme and started scheming a Manhattan variation. I became focused on the Cynar-apricot liqueur combination that appears in drinks like the One One Thousand and thought about the Little Italy and Slope. Instead of Punt e Mes, I wanted to let the ingredients shine more via dry vermouth akin to the Brooklyn and the Bensonhurst. Originally, I had more dry vermouth in the equation, but the drink tasted a bit thin, so I converted this into a 3:1:1:1 format. For a name, I thought about how many of the those cocktail names paid tribute to Italian neighborhoods in New York City, and I started researching and found that Mulberry Bend was the section in Manhattan that many Italians settled to later form Little Italy. Indeed, no mulberries were harmed in the making of this drink.