Rob Roy was an operetta that debuted on Broadway in 1894, only a few blocks away from the original New York Waldorf Astoria Hotel. For many years this was believed to be the origin of the Rob Roy cocktail, which made sense. The hotel would have created a drink to fit the production, looking for a way to include Scotch, since the play's main character was Scottish folk hero Robert Roy McGregor. Using the basic Manhattan formula, scotch would have taken the place of American whiskey, and consumers could enjoy a drink they knew with a twist appropriate for the evening's show.

And yet…

It turns out this just doesn’t add up. There are records of a Rob Roy cocktail that go back to 1873, roughly 20 years before the play was making its debut. Not only that, but these Rob Roy cocktails don’t look anything like the Manhattan riff that would have been served to those on their way to see the play.

Some further muddling

In 1884, still a decade before the plays first showing, Charlie Paul’s American and other Drinks outlined a scotch-based version of the Manhattan, but he used the name Manhattan to refer to this drink. There’s never any reference to this drink being known as a Rob Roy, only further complicating the drinks history. Over the next several decades a cocktail named Rob Roy appears in many different forms, but none of them are exactly like the others.

So what now?

It’s currently believed that the cocktail name came from the 1817 historical novel, Rob Roy, which was the basis for the operetta. Since then, the cocktail’s recipe has undergone several changes before it became the Scotch whiskey riff on a Manhattan we know today.