I'm on a quest to find my favorite martini. I know - tough life, right? Before I started drinking martinis, I didn't quite realize the variety that's possible. My wife turned me on to them - she, on occasion, drinks a vodka martini, with just a bit of vermouth swirled in the glass and then dumped out. I'd like to call that "extra dry," but I'm discovering that every bartender has a different interpretation of dry/extra-dry/etc.. Some say you use just a bit of vermouth, some say you rinse the glass with vermouth and pour it out, some say you just wave at the bottle of vermouth and call it a day. In any case, as any self-respecting martini drinker already knows, it's always dry vermouth. Because sweet vermouth in a martini would be, well, I don't know. Something else, I guess. On another note, I may be approaching the record for most "vermouths" in a single paragraph. Let's just wait and see if Guinness comes calling...........................................
Oh well.
I discovered pretty quickly that I much prefer a gin martini. And slowly, I discovered that I like more vermouth than my wife does, partly because gin has flavor and vodka does not. Someone once told me that actually, gin is just vodka that's been infused with, well, flavor. I have several choices if I want to verify that "fact," but I won't, in part because it does such a nice job of supporting my stance on the whole gin-has-flavor-and-vodka-doesn't thing. Next, I realized that not all martini olives are created equal - some are really good, and some taste like they recently spent some time in that place where Wade Watts told the corn-dog guy to put his sword. The bar near my house has the corn-dog version, but also they suck at making martinis, so by the time you get to the olive, it seems like a bit of a step up.
More recently, I tried a martini with a twist, which is hoighty toighty for "piece of lemon rind." Turns out I really like it! So I started buying more lemons and trying out various tools and techniques for removing the twist from it's natural habitat and re-homing it in my martini. I tried my vegetable peeler, but it's old and too dull to do the job. I tried my other vegetable peeler, which is conveniently located on the reverse side of a vegetable brush - but it's old and too dull to do the job. I tried yet another peeler from my drawer - this one is mounted perpendicular to the handle, and you pull it towards you instead of swiping sideways. It's newer and sharper and works MUCH better! But most of the time, in addition to the lemon rind, I also get a small piece of human rind and some blood. Meh.
I watched a video that taught me three ways to make a twist. Armed with newfound enlightenment, I bought a channel knife, which is specifically designed for making a twist. Maybe I bought a bad one, I dunno, cuz it's REALLY DIFFICULT for me to get a twist that way. So, I went back to the vegetable/human peeler.
Soon I started to hear some mild complaints from my wife about all the lemons that were sitting naked in our fruit drawer, showing pretty significant signs of dryness that she claimed were consistent with their lack of a protective outer layer. Maybe she was right, I don't know. I'm not a botanist or a materials scientist. I don't have a degree in lemonology, and I haven't stayed current on the science behind fruit-storage. I guess I'll give her about 50/50 on that one. In any case, I gave up and went back to olives.
When I talk about martinis, people who want to sound like they know what they're talking about sometimes ask me: "shaken or stirred?" Most of them fall into one of two camps: 1) they watched a few James Bond movies and they think a martini is better if it's shaken, or 2) they watched a few James Bond movies but then heard that James Bond is wrong. Once, at a bar in town, the bartender said, "your preference is stirred, I assume?" "Well," I said, removing my monocle and looking down my nose, "you have a penchant for stating the obvious, I assume?" Also, I pronounced "penchant" like a French guy, just to let her know I meant business.
Ok, I made up that last part. After she made an ass out of you and me, as they say, I just nodded. Because really, I didn't care if she shook it or stirred it or whatever, I just didn't want to look like an idiot in front of a total stranger who was clearly so far ahead of me on the martini spectrum.
When I started making martinis myself, I was a "shaken" guy, mostly because I have a thing in my kitchen that I thought was specifically designed to shake martinis. But then I heard about the whole James Bond debacle, and I tried stirring. These days, now that I "know what I'm doing," I put all the stuff in my cocktail shaker and gently swirl it. Sometimes clockwise, sometimes counterclockwise, sometimes both. I like this method because I came up with it myself. Also, because when I shake, I can feel my martini-drinking brethren inching slowly away from me, and when I stir, I have one extra thing to clean.
So when I say I'm on a quest to find my favorite martini, I really mean two things. 1) I'm trying several different gins and vermouths in various combinations and ratios to see what I like best, and 2) I'm chasing a really great martini I once had in a restaurant in Portland called Grain & Gristle. This was a couple of years ago, I think, so maybe it's not as good as I remember. But still - I'm chasing that feeling. And so far, despite my best efforts, I have yet to recreate it.
First, let's talk gin. I started with Hendrix, which was one of my gin-and-tonic favorites. In a gin and tonic, Hendrix is really great, but it's also kinda expensive if you're just gonna suck it down with a glass full of tonic. Still, I like it better than Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire. So I figured it would be a good start to my martini-quest. And one time, a couple of years ago, I overheard a fancy bartender say that Dolin Dry is a really good vermouth. So I shook up an extra-dry Hendrix martini, speared two olives, and... meh. It was fine. I tried Bombay next - and surprise, surprise, surprise! I liked it better. "Well that's weird," I thought, I've had me more than a few G&Ts over the years, and I know I like Hendrix better than Bombay... So I had another one just in case. Yep! Still liked it.
Mind blown, I started mixing up every gin I could get my hands on. Turns out, there's quite the variety. American gin, London dry, Old Tom, and more. Someone mentioned that Plymouth is bad with tonic but great in a martini, so I tried that. I read that Ford's is good, and when I paid for it, the liquor store guy said he liked it even more than Plymouth!
I was making some pretty good martinis at that point, but still not quite "livin' the dream." Then one day, it hit me - VERMOUTH! I was still stuck on the Dolin Dry, just because some stranger with suspenders and a fancy moustache said it was the shizzle. I remembered that years ago, my mom said Noilly Prat was good. And she would know, cuz she's older than I am (being my mom and all), and also maybe she heard it from an even fancier mustachioed gentleman. Or maybe not, but still - worth a shot, right? So I tried it. And I liked it. I found that with the Noilly Prat, I could use even more vermouth than I could handle with the Dolin Dry.
Once again, mind blown. Soon I was scouring the vermouth aisle for yet more options. Turns out there's not really all that many dry vermouths on the shelves in a Eugene, OR liquor store. BUT, there are enough that when multiplied by all the gin options and again by the gin-to-vermouth ratios, times two for the olive or twist (I'm gonna let it go, cuz it's just too easy) conundrum, there are a lot of martinis in my future. And that's ok by me.
Let's see... Plymouth and Vya, some amount of dryness, swirled, with a twist, please.