Opening

That is the best use for it. Grenadine covers the gap where Angostura would otherwise add bite, so the drink arrives rounder and reads as fruit rather than spice. Once it stops seeming sweet to you, the step across to a proper Manhattan is small.

You can, and plenty of old recipes do, but then you have built a Manhattan with grenadine in it. Left alone the drink is deliberately soft. Try it as written first, and if it tastes flabby rather than gentle, one dash fixes that.

Grenadine, down to 5 ml, and only then the vermouth down to 15. Serving temperature is the other half of the answer, since sugar reads far louder in a drink that has warmed up. Get the glass genuinely cold before anything goes into it.

It balances it. Punt e Mes is sweet vermouth with a quinine edge, and that bitterness gives the pomegranate something to push against. Standard sweet vermouth plus grenadine can stack into a single flat sugary note with no shape to it.

A classic Opening calls for 45 ml (1.5 oz) Rye whiskey, 22 ml (0.75 oz) Sweet vermouth, 8 ml (0.25 oz) Grenadine. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A standard Opening is roughly 32% ABV once mixed (before ice melt softens it further). That makes it spirit-forward — closer to a Martini than to a beer, so sip it slowly.

An Opening is shaken. About 13 seconds with plenty of ice chills and dilutes it correctly.