Boozehound - Jason Wilson [17]
Which brings me to this animal called a vodka martini, which was introduced by the baby boomers and then wholeheartedly embraced by my own generation. There simply is no such thing as a vodka martini. The martini is certainly more of a broad concept than a specific recipe, but the one constant must be gin and vermouth. Beyond correctness, vodka and vermouth is just a terrible match. So call this drink whatever you’d like, but it is not a martini.
We can pretty much blame the vodka martini on Ian Fleming, who introduced it in the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale—along with the ridiculous concept of shaking and not stirring a martini. Look, I don’t care how good Daniel Craig looks in his square-cut Speedo, or how much you love Sean Connery’s rakish suavity: a martini should always be stirred. That’s the only way you can achieve that silky smooth texture and dry martini clearness. In his classic 1948 bar guide, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury has a terse footnote: “If you shake the Martini, it becomes a Bradford.” For those attempting to work the macho angle, by the way, a shaken martini is a weaker drink.
Because change is in the air, here’s an idea: Let’s put to rest both the mid-twentieth-century Very Dry Martini and the vodka martini. Let’s pass a resolution that stipulates every dry martini should consist of a gin-to-vermouth ratio of at least 4:1 (okay, 5:1 in some cases) and offer incentives for those that move toward 2:1 or equal parts. (Even De Voto advocated a 3.7:1 ratio.) And while we’re at it, let’s sign an executive order banning the torturous use of jokes about vermouth.
“The martini evolves,” Wondrich says. “It has evolved since it was born.” Since it’s now so stunted and mutated, perhaps it’s best to go back to the beginning and start the evolution all over again. That’s what Wondrich and other classic cocktail people have done.
Let’s revisit what the martini was like before Prohibition. At the beginning there was actually a lot of vermouth in a martini. In fact, it was sweet vermouth from Italy. The Martini brand of sweet vermouth (for decades sold in the States under the name Martini & Rossi) was available since at least the early 1860s. There’s a lot of debate and a lot of crazy theories in cocktail geek circles about the mysterious origins of the name martini. Here’s my two cents: it probably came about because people called for a specific brand of vermouth—um, say, Martini—to mix with their gin. It’s probably no different than dudes who call for a Ketel One martini or Maker’s Manhattan at a bar today.
In the 1880s and 1890s, the martini and its cousins the Martine, the Martinez, and the Turf Club were basically differing ratios of gin and vermouth, with numerous variations involving dashing in bitters (orange or aromatic), sugar syrup, curaçao, maraschino liqueur, or even absinthe. One of my favorite martini cousins from that era is called the Fourth Degree, which is two parts gin and one part Italian vermouth with dashes of absinthe and aromatic bitters. One key difference in those early days was the gin. The predominant martini ingredient was Old Tom, a sweeter style of gin with more intense botanicals and less of the medicinal aftertaste. The famed Tom Collins actually derives its name from the fact that Old Tom gin was its original ingredient.
Beginning in the 1900s, there was a turn toward dry vermouth and dry martinis, and this is the first time we see dry becoming a code word for sophistication. In Imbibe!, Wondrich quotes an 1897 newspaper interview with a New York bartender: “When a customer comes in and orders a sweet drink … I know at once he’s from the country.”
During Prohibition, of course, the martini took a bad turn. Vermouth from Europe became scarce, as did certain liqueurs and bitters and Old Tom gin, and people started going for maximum alcohol. “Who was bootlegging