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MARTINI

10 PARTS GIN
1 PART VERMOUTH
TWIST OF LEMON OR A GREEN OLIVE
TO GARNISH

Professional boozehounds agree to differ when it comes to their favoured proportions of gin to vermouth, and when it comes to which brands they use. This is my preferred recipe for a dry Martini, using 50ml No3 London Dry gin and a teaspoon (5ml) of Noilly Prat vermouth. Fill a cocktail shaker or a jug with ice then pour in the gin and the vermouth. Stir with a cocktail spoon for no longer than ten seconds then strain into a chilled (very important) cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon or a green olive. It should, as one anonymous writer noted, resemble Fred Astaire in a glass.

VARIATIONS

DIRTY MARTINI		Add a splash of olive brine, garnish with an olive
GIBSON		Garnish with a cocktail onion
PINK MARTINI		Add a splash of Angostura bitters
CHURCHILL MARTINI		No vermouth; simply stir the gin over the ice to chill and slightly dilute it and serve with an olive marinated in dry vermouth
DRIPPING (OR WET) MARTINI		Half-and-half gin and vermouth
BURNT MARTINI		Add a splash of a peaty whisky
BRADFORD		A shaken Martini (so called, rather unfairly to Bradford, that bluff town in Yorkshire, because it’s always cloudy)
PARISIENNE		Add half a teaspoon of crème de cassis

THE AMERICAN WRITER H.L. MENCKEN claimed the Martini is ‘the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet’. Quite a claim, but one that quite possibly stands up for the seasoned drinker, for a good Martini is an aperitif of great, if potentially dangerous, joy.

It’s impossible to verify who invented the Martini – some claim it was Jerry Thomas, author of the seminal Bar-Tender’s Guide of 1862, in San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel for a miner from the town of Martinez in California who had struck gold and was in the mood to celebrate. Others say that it was a bartender named Martini di Arma di Taggia at New York’s Knickerbocker Hotel in the early 20^th century. Or was it just a shortening of a ‘Martini and gin’ – Martini & Rossi being a brand of Italian vermouth first produced in 1863? Whatever.

What we do know is that by the 1920s, the Martini had become the cocktail du jour, and its further associations with glamorous and celebrated drinkers – Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, and Humphrey Bogart – ensured its popularity continued to grow.

In the days of prohibition in America, gin was distilled illegally and was notoriously foul of flavour. The addition of vermouth made it more palatable and the drink added up to something much more than the sum of its parts. The original recipe was likely to be something close to half and half (known as a wet Martini; the more vermouth you use, the ‘wetter’ it becomes), but as the quality of gin improved in the following decades, the fashion became for the drinks to become drier by holding back on the vermouth and upping the gin. This does, it should be noted, also make the drink more alcoholic. Martinis became even drier in the UK and America during WWII as exports of Italian and French vermouths dried up during Nazi occupation.

Noël Coward was another Martini lover, and he liked them very, very dry. His recipe was to ‘fill a glass with gin and wave it in the general direction of Italy’, while Winston Churchill’s advice was to merely whisper the word ‘vermouth’ as you drank the gin. I’m also rather partial to Julia Child’s ‘reverse Martini’ – a glass of Noilly Prat vermouth over ice with a splash of gin on top. Recommended for daytime drinking or when there's a need to err on the side of caution.

Most bartenders would agree that James Bond, another famous imbiber, was mistaken in his request for his Martini to be ‘shaken not stirred’ – shaking the ingredients makes the drink cloudy.

However you take your Martinis, I urge you to heed Dorothy Parker’s dictum: I have put it to the test on more than one ill-judged occasion and can vouch for its good sense.‘I love to drink Martinis, but two at the very most. After three I’m under the table, after four I’m under the host.’