perfect martini

[Ken Gargett]

a couple of pieces on the perfect martini - no doubt none of us will agree with everything here. or each other.

from Punch. 

 

In Search of the Ultimate Martini

We asked 27 of today's top bartenders to submit their finest recipe for the Martini—then blind-tasted them all to find the best of the best. Robert Simonson on the search for the perfect take on the classic, and what we learned about the drink along the way.

February 1, 2017

story: Robert Simonson

photos: Lizzie Munro

If ever there was a cocktail that might provoke a brawl, it’s the Martini.

Ever since there have been people who think of themselves as Martini drinkers—a species that popped up following Prohibition, when the drink became Sahara-dry and the personal property of alpha males—there have been those who think theirs is the only proper Martini. Beefeater or Tanqueray or Plymouth, etc.; wet or dry or very dry, depending on the amount of vermouth; olive or twist; shaken or stirred; cold or colder or sub-zero. If you didn’t have a stated opinion on each, you were not considered a serious Martini drinker. 

Given the level of contention surrounding the cocktail, is it even conceivable that there is a “best” version of the drink?

We decided it was worth a try, which is why, on a recent Monday afternoon, we blind-tasted 27 Martinis, solicited from noted bartenders across the United States and as far away as Australia. On hand to help render verdicts were bartenders Will Elliott (Maison Premiere, Sauvage), Katie Stipe (recently of Grand Army) and Thomas Waugh (The Landmark), each of whom submitted their own version of the iconic drink.

For a cocktail with such a rock-solid reputation, the Martini endured a bumpy ride in its early years. “Who invented the Martini?” asked an assisting bartender at the tasting. The immediate (and correct) answer: “Nobody knows.”

There are many origin stories, but none you can’t poke a hole in. The drink began appearing in cocktail books in the 1880s as one of the first great modern cocktails to use vermouth, but it took a while for it to find itself. Early gin to vermouth ratios were often one-to-one; and the gin in question was the sweeter Old Tom, not London dry. The vermouth, meanwhile, was sweet as often as it was dry. (A possible ancestor of the Martini, the Martinez, also called for Old Tom and sweet vermouth.) It wasn’t until the early 1900s that recipes that began to resemble the archetypal dry Martini arrived on the scene.

While the dry Martini reigned for much of the 20th century, modern bartenders have seen to it that the old 50/50 version become voguish in recent years. Indeed, a number of the entries in the tasting were of the half-and-half sort. That version of the cocktail, however, was not what the tasting panel was after.

In a blind tasting, the team sampled 27 Martinis from today’s top bartenders.

All three bartenders agreed the 50/50 Martini, while a good thing, was a different drink altogether. In fact, Stipe suggested that any drink that went weaker than two parts gin to one part vermouth had crossed a line into non-Martini land. (When I suggested the 50/50 Martini debate was not unlike the endless dialogue surrounding whether the hot dog was a sandwich or not, PUNCH editor in chief Talia Baiocchi quickly shot back, “Of course the hot dog is not a sandwich.”)

Preferences at the table skewed decidedly classic—that is to say, classic as prescribed by post-Prohibition norms. “I’m old-school,” said Waugh. “I like a stronger Martini. I like it drier.” By the end of the tasting, Elliott agreed, observing that that panel was looking for “more noticeable gins and more gin,” in their ideal Martini. Asked to name their go-to Martini gins, the group called out classic names, like Tanqueray, Beefeater, Boodles and Plymouth; and modern gins, like Fords, Junipero and Perry’s Tot.

More than half of the entries were dispatched fairly quickly. Some were thought too watery and weak; others had obvious notes of outlier ingredients—crème de peche, Lillet Blanc, sherry, absinthe—that did not say “Martini” to the judges. (Stipe’s Martini was the one that contained sherry. While it was among some in the group’s favorites, it read more like a Bamboo cocktail than a Martini.) Cocktails that didn’t make a strong first impression rarely made the cut. It became clear that the panel preferred Martinis that spoke boldly—and had serious spine.

In the end, the most classic recipe of all won out—and the one authored by the most classic of bartenders. Dale DeGroff’s simple and strong concoction of Beefeater gin (3 1/2 ounces) and Martini Reserva Speciale Ambrato vermouth (1/2 ounce) was the victor, impressing with its straightforward, purist style.

“It’s all about gin choice,” observed Waugh about DeGroff’s cocktail, with Elliot adding, “The gin and vermouth are working with each other here, not battling each other.”

Coming in second was another veteran barman. Eben Freeman’s Martini called for Old Raj gin (2 ounces), Noilly Prat dry vermouth (3/4 ounce) and Cocchi Vermouth di Torino (1/2 ounce). The drink was full and round and elegant, with a sweetness brought out by the Cocchi that trailed off to a bitter finish.

The third favorite came from James Bolt of The Gin Joint in Charleston. He split his gin base between California’s Junípero (1 1/2 ounces) and Seattle’s Big Gin (3/4 ounce), while using Dolin dry, a favorite of many of the competing bartenders, as the vermouth (1/2 ounce). The drink’s curve-ball accent, however, was four dashes of saline tincture, which gave the cocktail a briny edge that turned up the volume on the other flavors.

Other Martinis that fared well in the polling included those by Waugh and Elliott themselves—both of them pre-bottled and frozen. Waugh split the gin between Tanqueray and Plymouth (1 1/4 ounces each) and the vermouth between Dolin Blanc and Noilly Prat Extra Dry (1/4 ounce each) and opted for three drops of Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6. Elliott’s Martini, which is served at Sauvage, called for Mahon Xoriguer gin (2 3/4 ounces), a Spanish gin with a heavy juniper note, and Mauro Vergano’s Luli (1/2 ounce), a Moscato-based Chinato from Italy, as well as three dashes of Angostura Orange Bitters. It was too delicious to ignore.

But was it a Martini? It was the question that hovered over all of the drinks tried during the tasting—a question that had to be satisfied before matters of flavor and construction could be taken up. Elliott’s drink was a rare case where taste trumped tradition; in most cases, tradition trumps taste. The sweet spot is where those two things overlap, an area about the size of the center circle on a dart board. 

 

 

In his book The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto, Bernard DeVoto praises a deftly executed dry gin Martini as a muse that promises no less than “art’s sunburst of imagined delights becoming real” (which is significant, since he trashes most other mixed drinks, even a barroom darling of such stature as the Manhattan).

Of course, achieving these results doesn’t come easy. DeVoto insists his revered cocktail must be spec’ed to an exacting 3.7-to-one, gin-to-vermouth ratio; it should be crowned with oil expressed from a lemon peel (which does not go in the glass afterward); and never should more than one serving be made at a time.

Such is just one example of the peerless thicket of arcana that clings to the Martini. Can you think of another cocktail so widely embraced, yet so subjected to personal whim?

“It’s one of the few drinks out there that no one will ever agree on,” says Alex Day of Proprietors LLC. “Everyone has their version of it, and it seems to be a deeply personal thing for people.”

Consider the (misunderstood) story of Winston Churchill’s vermouth-less Martini, or of James Bond’s famous preference for vodka over gin. Ratios, garnishes, glassware, rocks or not, the ways we’ve found to bend a Martini to our will are as innumerable as our taste buds.

Even DeVoto, a stickler to be sure, makes a perhaps unintended nod to the malleability of the Martini through an uncharacteristic equivocation: He says a Martini can be either shaken or stirred. That part apparently doesn’t matter.

Or does it? Cocktail science has advanced a long way since the day of The Hour, which first appeared in 1948. We now know each technique for mixing a Martini possesses its own unique qualities, and can deliver tangible variations on the final product, while keeping all else equal. Below, a look at each preparation in detail, starting from a commonly accepted build: two parts to one, London dry gin to dry vermouth. According to Day, “That core assemblage is the essence of what a Martini is.”

Shaking

Though it’s fallen out of favor these days, shaking does excel at delivering a cold Martini, fast. “You chill something much more quickly if you shake it,” says Kevin Liu, bar owner and author of Craft Cocktails at Home, which deals a lot with the science of drinks. Shaking is also very good at diluting a Martini, namely because, as Liu explains, “you cannot having chilling of a liquid without dilution.”

Bartender and cocktail writer Dave Arnold has dug deeper into these principles, both via his book, Liquid Intelligence, and in an earlier series of experiments chronicled for the International Culinary Center. “Shaking is so violent that it accomplishes everything it needs to in about 15 seconds,” writes Arnold. “After 15 seconds, the drink won’t chill much more, and the drink won’t dilute much more.”

Whether this point of equilibrium coincides with the arrival at optimal taste is a matter of personal preference. Over-chilling, most would agree, isn’t so much of a danger. (According to bartender Toby Cecchini, “The one thing you want out of a Martini is that it’s arctic… like falling into a swimming pool on a hot day.”) But over-dilution, which results in a watery Martini, is a risk.

The agitation that comes with shaking not only aerates the drink, it also causes ice cubes to chip. And unless they’re double-strained out, those tiny crystals will affect the drink’s mouthfeel. As for the impact of the tiny air bubbles in a Martini, “it’s not going to taste bubbly, like Champagne, if you will,” says Liu. “It’s more likely that [the drinker will perceive] some very, very slight creaminess.”

For many bartenders, what’s “off” about a shaken Martini is perceptible, yet hard to articulate. “There seems to be something a bit disjointed about the shaken Martini,” says Alex Day. “I’m not going to use the word ‘bruised’ or anything like that, but there seems to be a great cohesion when the Martini is stirred as opposed to when it is shaken. And maybe that is [due to] placebo, or some sort of ritual, but that has been my anecdotal observation.”

Stirring

“Stirring is much more mellow than shaking,” Arnold writes. “To stir a drink to the same temperature plateau that a shaken drink reaches in 15 seconds, you might need to stir 1 to 2 minutes.”

Most bartenders prefer their Martinis stirred. “By stirring, you’re slowly introducing chill and dilution in a very controlled way,” says Jim Kearns of New York’s Slowly Shirley and The Happiest Hour, “so that when you reach the peak amount of chill and dilution—ideally at the same time by using the largest ice you possibly can—you get a really well-made Martini.” What’s more, stirring eliminates air bubbles from the equation. With this technique, says Day, “the entire point of it is to chill and dilute without intentionally adding texture to the cocktail.”

On a molecular level, stirring may also serve to both accentuate and retain some of the more evanescent flavors and aromas found in gin. “In the odor headspace of gin, there are what look like about a couple hundred compounds,” says MIT research scientist Shannon Stewart, noting that adding water to gin “can favor the release of certain molecules.” Typically, this isn’t a result of chemical change, explains Stewart. Rather, “[stirring] changes the delicate balance between water-based compounds, alcohol-based compounds and oil-based compounds, and it can make them more accessible to your odor-receptor neurons or your taste-receptor neurons.”

In other words, that hit of water allows gin’s more hidden botanicals to reveal themselves. But it’s a tricky dance. “What happens with these small organics… [is that] they’re really sensitive to heat [and to] agitation,” says Stewart. “They evaporate easily.”

Stewart notes, too, that shaking can essentially agitate these flavors right out of the drink, whereas stirring tends to bring them forward, but keep them present in the liquid. Why do fewer odors escape from a Martini while it’s stirred? “The surface area of a stirred drink is much lower than its volume,” Stewart says. The exit just isn’t that big, relatively speaking.

Throwing (aka Pulling or Rolling)

The age-old technique of throwing a cocktail—think of Jerry Thomas juggling the flaming contents of a Blue Blazer overhead—for a long time had lost its footing in America. But, as bartender Naren Young points out, custodians of the craft shuttled the throw from Spain to America to Cuba and back to Spain over the years. And now, a few bartenders in the U.S.—including Young, bartender and Managing Partner at New York’s Dante, and Keli Rivers of the San Francisco gin bar, Whitechapel—are revisiting the technique by way of the Martini.

Besides bringing what Young calls “a bit of theatre to the guest experience,” one of the main effects of throwing—whereby the liquid mixture is poured in long streams back and forth between two shaker tins, one of which contains ice kept in place by the bartender’s strainer—is a lot of aeration. Rivers opts to throw a Martini when employing a Navy-strength gin; the technique allows her to temper the amount of dilution while aerating the drink at the same time, in essence borrowing traits of both shaking and stirring. She can literally observe, with each lengthening stream, the minute increases in volume the drink takes on after contact with melting ice. “It’ll start to get a thicker ribbon of spirit going down,” Rivers says. Texturally, she likens the effect of throwing to whipping egg whites: “You’re giving it fluff.… It rounds your tongue, it gives it depth.”

For what it’s worth, with the aeration that comes with throwing, you’re also increasing the surface area available to your liquid ingredients dramatically, says Stewart, and therefore, you may sacrifice some of those more volatile odors to the air.

But all the science in the world can’t dispel, or explain for that matter, the effects that ritual can have on our perceptions of an experience, even when that experience is a drink—and especially when that drink is a Martini. “You get people engaged and involved,” Rivers says of her guests at Whitechapel. “It’s kind of a dance.”

 

 

[Jeremy Festa]

Recently, on holidays, I had taken to using the Barrel Aged Four Pillars, chilled from the fridge, with Noilly Prat, and making them a little dirty. 

We would have two, then head to dinner.

As a result, every dinner was amazing.

 

 

 

[Jeremy Festa]

Also, as a result, I am now doing "dry February."

[Williamos]

A friend who insists one must be shaken
Is mistaken


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JohnS]

Barrel Aged Four Pillars, Jeremy? The one that is now unavailable, is that right? Sounds perfect!

My martinis are always stirred and always contain drops of orange bitters. I favour a classic ratio that is less dry than modern trends.

[Fuzz]

19 minutes ago, JohnS said:

Barrel Aged Four Pillars, Jeremy? The one that is now unavailable, is that right. Sounds perfect!

My martinis are always stirred and always contain drops of orange bitters. I favour a classic ratio that is less dry than modern trends.

Nope, still available, John.DM and Gin Heaven have it in stock.

[JohnS]

15 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Nope, still available, John.DM and Gin Heaven have it in stock.

And everywhere else it's unavailable, including Four Pillars' website?

[Jeremy Festa]

Barrel Aged Four Pillars, Jeremy? The one that is now unavailable, is that right? Sounds perfect!

My martinis are always stirred and always contain drops of orange bitters. I favour a classic ratio that is less dry than modern trends.

Yes indeed! At a 5:1. They were all time!


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[Fuzz]

2 hours ago, JohnS said:

And everywhere else it's unavailable, including Four Pillars' website?

I've found 5 different websites that claim to have the Barrel Aged in stock.

[Jeremy Festa]

Replace gin w vodka and add some lemon juice. Nuff said.

Sometimes

But only if it's this...




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[Ken Gargett]

15 hours ago, Fuzz said:

I've found 5 different websites that claim to have the Barrel Aged in stock.

barrel aged is a regular production gin from them, i believe. should not be hard to find though they do run out at times.

[Ken Gargett]

13 hours ago, magste said:

Replace gin w vodka and add some lemon juice. Nuff said.

my apologies. apparently i seem to have misled some people, though not sure why.

the heading does say 'prefect martini', not perfect vodka cocktail.

martini =s gin.

[JohnS]

2 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

my apologies. apparently i seem to have misled some people, though not sure why.

the heading does say 'prefect martini', not perfect vodka cocktail.

martini =s gin.

A martini made with vodka may also be known as a 'kangaroo cocktail'.

[Ken Gargett]

1 minute ago, JohnS said:

A martini made with vodka may also be known as a 'kangaroo cocktail'.

john, whilst i would never wish to be pedantic (unless i got the opportunity, of course), you cannot say "a martini made with vodka'. if a drink is made with vodka, it may be many things, including very good, but it can never be a martini.

it is like champagne. if it don't come from the region, it ain't champers.

[Ken Gargett]

4 minutes ago, magste said:

Never heard of a vodkatini?

several decades ago, we used to make vodsicles. not sure if the same thing.

no issue calling something a vodkatini, for me. does not blur the boundaries, does not attempt to usurp the name 'martini' and even pays tribute to the great martini itself. not a problem.

 

[JohnS]

9 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

john, whilst i would never wish to be pedantic (unless i got the opportunity, of course), you cannot say "a martini made with vodka'. if a drink is made with vodka, it may be many things, including very good, but it can never be a martini.

it is like champagne. if it don't come from the region, it ain't champers.

Yes, I don't have a problem with that. When it comes to martinis, I do prefer a classic recipe with orange bitters added and a lemon peel garnish (with absolutely no pith!).

Some people like olives or a pickled onion for a garnish (well, that's a Gibson isn't it?) I like olives sometimes too...but pretty much always with a vodka (or kangaroo) cocktail.