Rory O'More

A classic Irish Manhattan variation named after the legendary Irish rebel. This elegant stirred cocktail showcases Irish whiskey with sweet vermouth and citrus bitters.

The Rory O'More cocktail takes its name from Ruairí Mór Ó Mórdha — anglicized as Rory O'More — a Gaelic Irish nobleman from County Kildare who was one of the principal architects of the Irish Rebellion of 1641. O'More spent years secretly organizing a planned uprising to recover Irish Catholic lands seized during the Plantation of Ulster and to assert Catholic rights in Ireland, coordinating with Irish exiles on the European continent and building a domestic conspiracy network that was intended to simultaneously seize Dublin Castle and major Irish towns. The 1641 rebellion, which began on October 23 of that year, was one of the most consequential events in 17th-century Irish history, eventually merging into the broader Wars of the Three Kingdoms that engulfed Britain and Ireland through the 1640s. The cocktail named for him appears in the Mr. Boston Official Bartenders Guide as an Irish whiskey adaptation of the Rob Roy — the Scotch whisky Manhattan variant — substituting Irish whiskey for Scotch and orange bitters for Angostura, placing it in the same structural family as the Paddy Cocktail and the Emerald Cocktail. The drink reflects the American tradition of naming Irish whiskey cocktails after historical figures of Irish nationalist significance.