In this 1957 essay that was featured in the famed magazine Gourmet, M.F.K. Fisher defends her love of martinis at home and abroad, but notes that while in Provence it is easier (and much more enjoyable) to simply drink rosé.
ACROSS THE BAY IN THE CITY, WHICH IS THE way you talk about San Francisco if you live just outside it, people drink whatever has the quickest answer. The bleak, stylish bars off Montgomery Street are straight-faced about Gibsons, a more or less western and much ginnier version of the dry Martini, which is to say that a Gibson has almost nothing in it but cold gin, with an onion instead of an olive for the fussy oldsters. One barman ostentatiously puts a single drop of vermouth from an ophthalmologist’s instrument into his concoction at the last minute; another, with half an eye on the publicity department, uses a perfume atomizer to spray a first and at the same time final whiff of the fortified wine over the glass of icy liquor.
Across the land in Boston, too, the proportions of gin to vermouth have risen, even since Robert Benchley’s dictum that there should be just enough of the latter to take away “that ghastly watery look.” Now even the best clubs serve Martinis which are almost colorless.
As one travels toward Europe, the dryness of a dry Martini depends on the type and nationality of the transportation.
Most of the airlines have now come to the same conclusion that I did in 1929 on a ship: that there is nothing much better to combat a general feeling of queasiness than a judicious application of gin and vermouth, except of course Champagne sec, which I could not afford. Numerous bored or frightened air passengers have found relief and courage in the little noggins of ready-mixed cocktail put into their hands as the safety belts tightened around them near La Guardia. And in the same way, the people who still think there is nothing quite as exciting as the sea approach to a new continent reach for a dry Martini in the ship’s bar and feel better for it in spite of the increased volume of vermouth as they approach Plymouth, Antwerp, Hamburg, or Cannes.
The same rule applies by air and by sea: subtly and irrevocably the cocktail becomes more wine and less liquor the nearer one gets to Europe. And this isn’t for reasons of economy, since gin costs ten times as much as vermouth, but because European bartenders believe firmly and stubbornly and even passionately that anyone who asks for a Martini wants a drink made mostly of Martini—and Martini is the name of a vermouth, is it not so?
By the time the plane lands at Orly or the boat train pulls into the Paris station, strong men and resolute women who, in San Francisco or Boston, would turn gray or even green at the idea of swallowing a Martini that is less than perfect, feel what probably amounts to resignation about the European version of the silvery cocktail. They know that if they make themselves very loud, and scowling or pouty depending on their age, sex, and general tendencies, they may possibly get something reminiscent of what Dad used to shake up during prohibition. It will be made of a local version of English gin, unless they are knowing enough to demand English gin. It will be made of sweet red vermouth unless the American tourist is knowing enough to demand dry white vermouth, and it will be made without ice unless he demands ice. And if he is foresighted enough to demand ice, it will be served in a lump in the glass, which will often be a tall lemonade glass with the “cocktail” down in the bottom. The cocktail will be made, if the American is very fortunate, in the proportions of half and half—and if he is less so, in The City’s proportions but in reverse, so that a flick of gin has been gently and cautiously passed over the ruddy, sweet, herby, and strangely bolstering potion.
This dispassionate description of a European Martini springs, I must point out, from what I have observed here in Aix-en-Provence on behalf of a Visiting American. As a footnote to the footnote, I shall add that there are bars, in most great cities of France, which can and often do serve Martinis as dry and as impeccable as those of the United States. But in Aix (“Ancient city of fountains, culture, music, almond cakes and carnival; population some 32,000; 747 kilometers south of Paris and 29 kilometers north of Marseille”), people who drink before meals are comparatively few. Those who do, usually outsiders from Paris or Lyons or even Marseille, are, according to the Aixois, nervous or overtired or just plain crazy.
I have often found myself in this category, and very pleasurably so, but have seldom felt it enough to insist on a dry Martini. To most people in Provence (including me, except in states of dire and fortunately rare duress), a glass of the cool pink wine I plan to drink with the meal is also very good indeed beforehand—and much simpler!
But this is not the case with my Visiting American, a good sensitive creature who had flown thousands of miles to spend a few crowded days here with me. Perhaps I have a lingering feeling of guilt because I exposed my friend to the local vagaries of “le cocktail.” Certainly this visit and its accompanying alcoholic research would not have happened if I, and therefore my guest, had been in Casablanca or Caracas. No wonder I find myself worrying and even having predawn nightmares about dry Martinis, my inadequacy in procuring them, and their ultimate unattainability in the south of France.
To get the whole thing into a fairly practicable formula which can be used by other people fated with the same problem when they are somewhat off the beaten path (that is, not in Cannes or Nice or even St. Tropez), let it be understood that there is no use asking for a dry Martini. Even more so, one must not try to Gallicize the name and ask for a Martini dry: this means a dry white vermouth made, if one is lucky, in Martini, Italy—and in the back room of the bar, if one is not. This is sometimes served chilled as it is supposed to be and occasionally one finds in it a little piece of tired lemon peel. To get a dry Martini, one must unhesitatingly ask for a Martini-gin, pronounced zheen. In hamlets, gin is usually unheard of anyway; in villages, there may possibly be one half-empty faded bottle left from the Liberation in ’44, and in towns of 10,000 and over, one may actually find real gin.
Furthermore, one must say first, firmly and loudly, “gin français” (if the pocketbook is thin), or “gin anglais,” if the visiting American is picking up the chit. Then say “very little vermouth,” and finally, “with ice.” The latter is the most important part.
I myself have never cared much about ice. I like chilled things or even frozen things, but I feel that too much chilling or freezing often kills the flavors I want to taste. Some of my best friends, however, like, love, crave ice to the point of ruthless addiction. My Visiting American managed to ask for and get ice by what amounted to a desperate artistry.
There is probably a permanent frost burn across the face of Provence after our memorable ten-day pursuit of the dry Martini. I suspect that ice buckets still stand, half full of melted cubes rushed in from butcher shops of astonished neighbors, in a dozen little places like Le Relai Bleu in La Palette (population 214) and Aux Cigales in Luynes (population 382), where nobody had ever asked for ice before and quite possibly never will again. And although nothing has been said, I feel fairly sure that the amiable and discreet Visiting American still nurses an aftertaste of vermouth. And I, like Provence, may be faintly but forever scarred.
This enforced bit of research, sociological as well as alcoholic, made me wonder about the connotations of the words “dry Martini,” or, more precisely, of the word “cocktail” in what is loosely called The French Mind. And I decided that in spite of general familiarity with Yankee movies and whodunits and other efforts at foreign culture, to the French, cocktail means about what it did before World War I, or even before then—say, in the Edwardian heyday. In the midst of my semantic musings, I happened, by coincidence, to receive from Paris a fat book called The Drinker’s Breviary, and, to my very real astonishment, I found that in spite of some of its oddly old-fashioned sounding contents it had been published only a few years ago and not in the nineteenth century.
The book states the usual good rules for drinking in this Western World: the reasons for drinking red wines and white wines as we do, the care of wines, and their general significance in our culture. It also includes ways to transfigure or pollute these viny miracles, according to one’s proclivities. There are, for instance, some appalling punch recipes, most of them dating from long before Edward and many of them long unused. Some, though, are still being concocted—and even drunk—at hunt breakfasts in Lanarkshire and rectors’ teas in Brookline.
The introduction in the Breviary to the subject “Les Cocktails” starts out, ‘There is no firm rule about the preparation of cocktails, and as a matter of fact fantasy and imagination are often the only guides. However, in order to compose a drink maintaining a modicum of flavor, it is almost always essential to remember the rule that there should be, in spite of everything and above all, a mixture of one or two strong liquors and one or two syrups.”
Having briefed the gay dog of a cocktail mixer thus firmly (“in spite of everything and above all”), the Breviary adds in a terse sentence before its list of recipes, “Thus, for beginners, we present a few formulae which are, in a manner of speaking, classic.”
To make a Scotch Cocktail, the Breviary instructs, use Scotch, sugar syrup, orange juice, lemon juice and (heaven help us!) raspberry syrup. Martini Flip calls for a lethal-sounding combination of Scotch, vermouth, eggs, powdered sugar and a pinch of nutmeg. The Vermouth Cocktail, I think, must have been intended to do in unwelcome droppers-in at cocktail time. It is a mixture of Scotch, sweet red vermouth, powdered sugar, orange juice, lemon juice and grapefruit juice. There are also recipes for drinks called Normandy Cocktail and Cocktail Brandy. If the word “cocktail” comes first, the drink is old-fashioned. For instance, the Normandy Cocktail dates from after World War II, whereas Grandpa may have imbibed a Cocktail Brandy in London in 1911.
Probably my favorite in the French Breviary is the recipe for a cocktail called Le Pink, pronounced pangk or peenk, depending on one’s social and educational level in Aix. The recipe for this drink reminded me that when I was young my father made something for parties that was fuzzy, potent, and of course pink, from applejack, eggs and grenadine. It could not possibly have been as heavenly as I remember it—nor as awful as it sounds now. Le Pink is composed of sweet vermouth, currant juice, cherry brandy, and the ubiquitous raspberry syrup, apparently as necessary to the old-time bar as it is to the American drugstore today. These disparate ingredients were put into a shaker, and then some (“some” seems the best way to translate “une certaine quantite”) shaved ice was added, the drink shaken and then served over a currant and a raspberry.
How pretty it must have looked! But I wonder what the Visiting American would have thought of it—aside from the essential “certain quantity” of ice, of course!