This younger cousin of the Manhattan was created a few years before the American prohibition. First published in Hugo R. Ensslin’s Recipes for Mixed Drinks in 1917 it is also, according to Cointreau, probably the first ever American cocktail that calls specifically for the French orange liqueur.
As opposed to the Manhattan the Deshler is also specific when it comes to another ingredient. Instead of using a sweet vermouth the Deshler is made with Dubonnet, the French fortified wine created in 1846 to help the French colonists in Northern Africa cope with malaria.
The name of the cocktail is taken from the Deshler Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, one of three hotels owned by two brothers called Wallick. Hugo R. Ensslin worked at all three but he worked longest at their Wallick Hotel on Times Square, New York, and this is supposedly where he created the Deshler.
Interestingly, the Deshler Hotel in Columbus was listed in the African American postal worker Victor Hugo Green’s The Motorist Green Book. This was a guide book where African Americans could find hospitable lodgings during the time of the Jim Crow laws of racial segregation in the southern states of the US.
A more far fetched background story to the cocktail is that it was named after a lightweight boxer called Dave Deshler. After a pretty good career he finished his last ever boxing match after a technical knockout in January of 1917, the same year Hugo R. Ensslin published his book. So maybe this 5 ft. 3 in. boxer was worth a cocktail in his honor.
The glass is called Buster and was designed by Willy Johansson in 1961.
