Cappa - destined to become a classic drink?

The Manhattan, the Dry Gin Martini and the Negroni could be considered the Triple Crown of the cocktail kingdom.

According to William F. Mulhall, a bartender who plied his trade at New York's Hoffman House in the 1880s, the drink was invented "by a man named Black who kept a place 10 doors below Houston Street on Broadway" in the 1860s.

The Dry Gin Martini didn't appear until around 1905 when dry vermouth started gaining in popularity in the U.S., and the country was turning to London Dry gin rather than the malt Genevers or the sweetened Old Tom gins that had been popular in the previous century.

Franky Marshall, a bartender who holds forth at New York's Dead Rabbit - disclaimer: I work there on occasion, too - recently set out to create a classic drink all her own, and there's a decent chance she pulled it off.

Marshall's Cappa cocktail, named for the black cloaks, or cappas, worn by the Black Friar monks who used to dwell in what is now the Plymouth gin distillery, is a doozy of a drink that, with a little luck, will still be featured on cocktail menus 100 years from now.