Prologue

My Dad’s Martini

I grew up in an average American household. When cocktail hour came along, my mother had an Old-Fashioned and my father had a Martini—the apple pie and rare steak of American drinking. Neither wavered in their preference over the years. As was the case with many of their generation, they had their drinks and they stuck to them. Unlike other men of his era, my father wasn’t overly fussy about his Martini. He didn’t have a favorite gin—whatever was cheapest would do, usually Mr. Boston—and he drank his Martinis on the rocks, holding the glass in the same hand as one of his Kent cigarettes.

But, like any Martini drinker, he insisted on a few particulars. He thought the whole dry Martini–vermouth atomizer ethos ridiculous, and always included a fair measure of vermouth in his drinks. Believe it or not, he liked the flavor of vermouth. He also slipped in a little olive brine; not too much, just a quarter of a teaspoon to, in his words, “enhance the taste of the olive.” And he was respectful of the drink’s potency.

“Unless you sip it, you’re going to drink too much,” he told me. “It’s too strong. On the rocks, it’s diluted, so you don’t have to worry about how fast you’re drinking it. Younger people, when they’re starting to drink, tend to serve too many. They down them like Coke. And they’re very aggressive at refilling. You could get loaded pretty quickly.

“A lot of our drinking was done at house parties, dinners,” he continued. “We had this group who would take turns serving dinner. Same group, every month. There were always cocktails first, ad infinitum.”

When I asked why he drank Martinis, he shrugged and said, “It was just something I did every day at five o’clock.” But why not another cocktail? What is it about the Martini?

He paused, struggling for the right words. “It has a unique flavor,” he began. “You really get a shock out of it, especially the first sip. It doesn’t knock you out, but it’s a definite shock, the feeling and the taste. It makes you sit up and pay attention.” He paused again. “I keep coming back to the word ‘shock.’ ”

He agreed with me that it was important that the drink be very cold. “But,” he added, “I never had a problem with that. They didn’t last too long.”