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 Entertainment | May 2006 
In Praise Of The Silver Bullet
 Nick Passmore - Forbes.com
| Kai Hecker
Appletini
2 oz. vodka (Smirnoff Green Apple Twist vodka if available)
1/2 oz. Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps or 1/2 oz. apple juice or cider
Pour ingredients directly into a shaker. Shake well and strain into a chilled Martini glass. Garnish with an apple slice.
Buñuel Martini
The famous surrealist Spanish director Luis Buñuel's favorite martini.
1 1/2 oz. gin (Bombay or Tanqueray)
1/2 oz. Noilly Pratt
Half a demitasse spoon of Angostura Bitters
Pour ingredients directly into a shaker. Stir. Serve in a chilled Martini glass. Garnish with an olive.
Cajun Martini
3 oz. vodka or ginGlass coated with Tabasco
1/2 of a jalapeno pepper
Combine in a shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled Martini glass coated in Tabasco.
Champagne Martini
1 1/2 oz. vodka
Champagne
Pour vodka into a chilled champagne flute. Add Champagne. Garnish with several fresh raspberries.
Chocolatini
2 oz. vodka
1 oz. Godiva Chocolate Liqueur
Cocoa Powder
Wet the rim of a Martini glass and dip in cocoa. Pour vodka and Godiva Liqueur in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into the Martini glass. Garnish with a Hershey's Kiss.
Cosmopolitan
1 1/2 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. Cointreau or Triple Sec
3/4 oz. cranberry juice
1/4 oz. lime juice
Combine all ingredients in cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well. Strain into a Martini glass. Garnish with a lime squeeze.
Dirty Martini
2 oz. gin
1 tbsp. dry vermouth
2 tbsp. olive juice
Pour ingredients directly into a shaker. Serve in a Martini glass. Garnish with olives.
James Bond's Martini (The Vesper)
3 oz. gin (Gordon's)
1 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. vermouth (Kina Lillet)
Shake until ice-cold. Pour into a deep champagne goblet. Add a large, thin slice of lemon peel.
Dirty Earl Grey Martini
(Bar Vendôme, Ritz Paris, 1999, Alain Willaumez)
1/10 Earl Grey tea, freshly infused a few minutes beforehand
9/10 gin or vodka
Prepare the ingredients in a mixing glass, then pour into a Martini glass and garnish with a zest of lemon.
Gibson
Said to be invented for famous Gilded Age illustrator and bon vivant Charles Dana Gibson.
2 oz. gin or vodka
2 drops dry vermouth
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled Martini glass. Garnish with a pearl onion.
Gimlet
2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. lime juice
Pour the ingredients directly into a shaker. Stir. (Shaking bruises the gin.) Serve in a Martini glass with a lime squeeze.
Lemon Drop
2 oz. lemon vodka
2 tsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. sugar
Moisten the rim of a Martini glass with lemon juice and dip in 1/2 of the sugar to frost. Mix vodka and remaining lemon juice and sugar in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into the Martini glass. Garnish with a lemon slice.
Lillet Martini
(Bar Hemingway, Ritz Paris, 2006)
10/10 Tanqueray No. Ten served at precisely -18.3ºC
A dash of Lillet
Pour ingredients directly into a shaker. Stir. (Shaking bruises the gin.) Serve in a Martini glass. Garnish with a lemon peel.
Martinez
Some believe this to be the original Martini recipe.
1 1/2 oz. gin
1 1/2 oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes maraschino liqueur
1 dash bitters
Pour ingredients directly into a shaker. Stir. Serve in a chilled Martini glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon.
Martini (Classic)*
1 1/2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. dry vermouth
Lemon peel or olive
Stir gin and vermouth over ice cubes in a mixing glass. Strain into a Martini glass and add the olive.
*Also known as olive soup, see-through or silver bullet. The ratio of gin to vermouth varies depending on how dry you like it. A medium-dry martini is approximately five parts gin to one part vermouth; a very dry martini is eight parts gin to one part vermouth.
Martini (Medium)
1 1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. dry vermouth
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
Pour ingredients over ice into shaker, adding gin first. Shake. Strain and garnish with olive.
Martini (Sweet)
1 1/2 oz. dry gin
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth
Pour ingredients directly into a shaker. Stir. Serve in a chilled Martini glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon or olive.
Picasso Martini
(Bar Hemingway, Ritz Paris, Oct. 14, 2000 at 1:45 A.M.)
A cocktail for midnight
8/10 gin at -18.4 degrees C
1 cube of frozen Noilly Pratt vermouth
Pour gin into a Martini glass. Take out your frozen Noilly Pratt cube and drop it into the glass.
Raspberry Martini
(Bar Hemingway, Ritz Paris, 1998)
A Martini cocktail perfect for the beginning of the evening or as a refreshing digestive.
10/10 raspberry vodka
Serve the raspberry vodka at -18.4 degree C degrees in a Martini glass.
To prepare Raspberry vodka:
8 3/4 oz. raspberries
1 bottle of high-quality vodka
Drop the raspberries one by one into a bottle of vodka (or, if you prefer, 3/10 of the bottle). Wait for three weeks and serve in a frosted glass at -18.4 degrees C.
Ritzini
(Bar Hemingway, Ritz Paris, 1994)
8/10 vodka
2/10 ginger vodka
Pour ingredients into a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir the cocktail for ten seconds and pour into a Martini glass.
In a small bottle filled 7/10 with vodka, add a handful of skinned ginger. Place it in a cupboard (not in the fridge) for two months. Shake it from time to time. You now have ginger essences. |
H.L. Mencken thought it the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet, and E.B. White called it "the elixir of quietude." It, of course, is that American gift to the world, the most sublime of cocktails, the dry gin martini.
The martini bespeaks an elegant, worldly sophistication. It conjures images of Cole Porter's "High Society" and Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady"; it is Nick and Nora Charles knocking back a couple while engaging in a spot of dazzling repartee; it is Fred swirling Ginger across an opulent 1930's dance floor; it is Irving Berlin putting on his "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails."
Ice-cold and clear in the classic art deco glass, an olive or twist of lemon adding a touch of color, no other drink inspires such reverential and ritualistic awe in its devotees. It is a balm against a sordid world, a shield against all that is sullied, rushed and coarse.
For James Carville, martini enthusiast and about the only real drinker in the former Clinton White House, it is a social experience: "The ultimate feeling in the world is to be about two-thirds of the way through my second martini with people I like. Anything seems possible." Whereas noted food writer M.F.K. Fisher looked on it as a source of solace and refuge: "A well-made dry martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature."
Martinis are a balm against a sordid world, a shield against all that is sullied, rushed and coarse.
Of course, there is also too much of a good thing. Martinis have the wallop of a pack mule, and devotees must pace themselves. There is an old riddle that defines the guidelines nicely: Question: "Why are martinis like women's breasts?" Answer: "Because one is not enough and three are too many."
The origins of the martini are, like most drinks, obscure. The town of Martinez in California claims to be where the first one was made, during the gold rush of 1849, though there has been more than a little speculation that this is merely an enterprising invention of the Martinez Chamber of Commerce.
There was certainly a Martinez cocktail being served in San Francisco by the 1880s, but it appears to have been a variation of the Manhattan and to have been made with sweet vermouth and Old Tom gin, a sweet 19th-century variation.
Something resembling today's martini probably evolved from this drink around the turn of the century, though at that time it also contained various bitters, and in London clubs, a dash of absinthe was often added. One can only marvel at the atomic effects of that enticing concoction.
Although the name and the right ingredients had come together by about 1900, the proportions, one part gin to two parts vermouth, would make a contemporary aficionado shudder and call for the bartender's head. The evolution to today's proportions, about six or eight parts gin to one part vermouth, was slow; even in 1947, Trader Vic's bartending guide recommended two parts gin to one part vermouth (see: "20 Great Martini Recipes"). As humorist Robert Benchley once remarked, the recipe for an ideal martini was three parts gin and enough vermouth to take away that ghastly watery look.
One of the great divides in martini culture, which inspires a passion similar to debating the virtues of Macs over PCs or Ali over Marciano, is whether the superior martini is made by shaking or stirring. There is much talk about "bruising" the gin, a notion that repels as many people as it attracts. In the spirit of disclosure, I must admit that I am an advocate of bruising, or shaking, and for more reasons than that it was James Bond's preferred manner of preparation.
To properly make a martini, one needs a metal cocktail shaker and plenty of ice. The chemistry between the ice and metal instantly chills the gin to just the right temperature, but it is the shaking that makes a martini more than just cold gin. Like a centrifuge, a good vigorous shaking will combine the molecules of the gin and vermouth, effectively altering their nature for the better.
Many believe that a mere stirring, regardless of how muscular it may be, will not produce the same effect. Colin Field, head barman at the Bar Hemingway at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, is a stirring man. "Why did Bond insist on having his Martinis shaken? Because he was a rebel, an iconoclast, but also because he was in constant bloody danger. By doing things differently, that was how he stayed alive."
Ironically, the immense popularity of gin in America in the 1930s, '40s and '50s was largely due to Prohibition; bathtub gin was the easiest and cheapest bootleg alcohol to make, so party-goers developed a taste for it, which they didn't give up when the stuff became legal again.
The martini reigned as America's favorite, and quintessential, drink from the end of Prohibition until the late '60s, when its popularity began to fade along with the three-martini lunch and the growth in wine drinking - not to mention people seeking stimulation from more-illicit substances. But like that other demon of decadence, the cigar, martinis have made a comeback.
As the inveterate and somewhat irritating trend-spotter Faith Popcorn observed in The New York Times, the martini revival may be due to self-indulgence replacing self-denial as the reigning fashion. She could be right. But for true martini lovers, this cocktail of cocktails has never been out of fashion - the rest of the world just did not know what pleasures they were depriving themselves of when they passed up an ice-cold see-through for a glass of Chardonnay.
For baby boomers, it was their parents' drink - something drunk before, during and after a meal by people ignorant of the pleasures of wine, and as such, something to be shunned. Today's tipplers, not burdened with such Freudian baggage, are more than happy to rediscover the calming joys and contented self-satisfaction that results from getting outside one of these high-octane cocktails.
For most of this century, the martini was the drink of the WASP upper class and those who aspired to it; it was a mark of savoir faire, a badge of membership. As Barnaby Conrad III observed in his highly amusing book, The Martini, it is the drink of the elite, consumed in well-upholstered bars, boardrooms and country clubs. It is not a drink for the mountain trail, the ballpark or the taproom; it is an urban, and urbane, drink; a coat-and-tie sort of drink.
The martini is really all about gin. In fact, for the true aficionado, it is the only justification for gin's existence. |
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