The Martini: How to Make the Perfect Martini


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The Martini

How to Make the Perfect Martini

No drink quite speaks of glamour and sophistication like the Martini. When we think of the martini, we think of glamorous actresses in long satin dresses of the thirties, delicately sipping a martini. We think of their escorts, in tux and tails, also with a martini in their hands. FDR loved his martini, as did Winston Churchill, Cary Grant, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and that inventor of the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, "The Father of the Atom Bomb" who knew power when he saw it. Most of all, when we think of the martini we think of of a special celebratory night, and what New Year's Eve is not enhanced by a martini.

After years of lauding only wine, the martini, an American invention, has returned to the forefront to remind us that even in hard financial times we can be glamorous. Try any of the following three martini recipes to make either an old-time martini, a 1930's martini or a new-time dry martini. If your stain dress or your tails are at the dry cleaner, be sure to sip that martini with elegance.

Expert mixologist and author of The Cocktail Primer: All You Need to Know to Make the Perfect Drink, Eben Klemm of the B. R. Guest Restaurants has given us this martini advice and three recipes for the martini so we may make the memorable martini at home with confidence and aplomb. Many thanks to publisher Andrews McMeel for sharing from this scintillating book. click for book review

"Martinis should be stirred in a shaker that is completely filled with ice. Only then can you achieve the alcoholic balance that makes these cocktails great. It is a demonstration I perform in all my introductory classes for B.R. Guest bartenders: Make two gin martinis, shake one, stir the other, and try both. Not only does the shaken martini look less appealing—an icy translucent soup next to a light-catching diamond—but its flavors are hard to discern. There is little truth that a shaken martini is colder than a stirred one; many are fooled by the presence of ice crystals in the shaken cocktail.

Some bartenders argue that stirring the martini takes longer. Not really. Stirring cannot be duplicated with a gentle swirl of the shaker or by pouring the ingredients together and hoping that the gods of Brownian motion will do their part. When they hit ice, liquors become viscous at different rates; they will not mix on their own. When you stir a martini, you may be tempted to pause: fetch your glasses, prepare your garnishes, or take your hors d’oeuvres from the oven. I believe, on the basis of nothing but instinct, that a pause in the midst of stirring a martini or any drink somehow ties it together. Perhaps it’s just the increased anticipation.

martini

Martini Recipes

OLD-TIME MARTINI click for printable recipe

Serves 1

The martini has become more popular than is good for it. Over the last century it has been reformulated so many times that it is barely recognizable as what it once was. Partly as a response to the American palate, it has become more savory, since more sweet drinks are available today. Mostly, however, improvements in the quality of gin and vodka have contributed to this trend. Less vermouth and less bitters are needed to obscure the power of bad booze, and the martini has metamorphosed from a dainty little winey cocktail to the powerhouse of alcohol it has become today.

1 1/2 ounces gin
1 1/2 ounces sweet vermouth
Dash of angostura bitters
Lemon peel, for garnish

Pour the gin, vermouth, and bitters into an empty cocktail shaker. Fill the shaker with ice and stir with a bar spoon until the outside is cold. Strain and serve, garnished with lemon peel.

1930S DRY MARTINI click for printable recipe

Serves 1

Originally a dry martini referred not to the ratio of vermouth to gin but to the use of dry rather than sweet vermouth. Once this shift obliterated the original recipe, the ratio levels began to change. It seems we’ve gone up one level of reduction of vermouth every decade since the thirties.

2 ounces gin
1 ounce dry vermouth
Lemon peel or 3 small green olives, for garnish

Pour the gin and vermouth into an empty cocktail shaker. Fill the shaker with ice and stir with a bar spoon until the outside is cold. Strain and serve, garnished with lemon peel or olives.

NEW-TIME DRY MARTINI click for printable recipe

Serves 1

I call this a new-time martini because it is made with vodka, which, rather than gin, seems to be the spirit of choice in the twenty-first century. As with a gin martini, the vermouth is important, although not everyone who makes a vodka martini agrees, and so many are devoid of vermouth. I garnish this with green olives, but if you substitute black olives, the drink becomes a buckeye.

3 ounces vodka or gin
Dash of dry vermouth
Lemon peel or 3 small green olives, for garnish

Pour the vodka and vermouth into an empty cocktail shaker. Fill the shaker with ice and stir with a bar spoon until the outside is cold. Strain and serve, garnished with lemon peel or olives.

As a final note: Klemm states: "Half a decade ago it somehow became fashionable to fill a martini glass to the brim so that the customer had to take the first sip without lifting it off the bartop. With your cocktails, you are elevating your friends to clouds of elegance, not converting them to chores at the trough. If, when when making a martini at home, you end up with more martini than glass, wait until the recipient of the martini takes a sip or two before pouring the rest."

And then - enjoy your martini, whichever one you make, and be sure to don the tux or the satin dress.

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