Revolver

A modern classic that riffs on the Manhattan, combining bourbon with coffee liqueur and orange bitters for a rich, spirit-forward sipper.

The Revolver was created in 2004 by Jon Santer while managing the bar at Bruno's, a jazz club in San Francisco's Mission District. Santer's employer handled the liquor buying, and one week a case of Bulleit bourbon arrived — a brand so new that no customers were calling for it by name. Looking for a way to showcase the rye-heavy bourbon, Santer took a friend's habit of adding crème de cacao to Manhattans as a starting point, then shifted from chocolate to coffee as the flavoring. He paired the Bulleit with Tia Maria coffee liqueur and orange bitters, and for the garnish borrowed a technique from bartender Dale DeGroff's book The Craft of the Cocktail: a flamed orange peel, its oils ignited to release caramelized aromatics over the glass. The drink name plays on the bourbon brand — a bullet fires from a revolver. Bruno's wasn't a cocktail bar and few customers ever ordered from the menu, so the Revolver languished until Santer joined the opening staff at Bourbon & Branch in 2006. It became one of only a handful of original drinks on the debut menu. When Bourbon & Branch opened the Library, a standing-room-only space with a short focused menu, bartenders were flaming 50 to 75 orange peels per night. Jeffrey Morgenthaler's inclusion in The Bar Book (2014) and Robert Simonson's in Three Ingredient Cocktails brought the drink to a global audience.