The Martini is having a moment. But then again, maybe it never went away. Because no other cocktail, it seems, has had quite the same power to fascinate.
What is it about the Martini that makes it so interesting? This is a question I’ve had to ask myself a lot. And the more I find myself asking it, the more interesting the cocktail becomes.
Its simplicity is part of its power; there’s an immediacy to it. Yet its spartan union of gin (or vodka) and vermouth can be tinkered with almost infinitely. It’s an icon, a signifier, an emoji, that speaks to a globalised world. And yet the definition of a ‘perfect’ Martini will always be deeply personal.
Personalisation – from fashion and luggage, to fragrance – is a big buzzword in luxury right now. Whether they’re selecting a customised interior for their Bentley, ‘layering’ perfumes to create their own signature scent or co-designing their own unique pair of Nikes, consumers are looking for ways to stand out. And how you take your Martini – and the brands you choose to use to make it – is another, extremely potent, way of expressing your identity.
Another thing I keep coming back to is the Martini’s capacity to evolve. Because, contrary to what Martini pedants might tell you, it’s not a recipe written down in stone. It is a formula that has waxed and waned over the decades. And every iteration over the past 150 years tells you something about the age.
The Martini emerged in the 1880s, when cocktails were still generally quite sweet, often made with sweet Old Tom gin and liqueurs in a bid to distract from less-than-perfect spirits. As distilling techniques improved, and London dry gin took off, people’s palates matured, and dry drinks of all kinds – dry gin, dry vermouth, dry Champagne – soon became the sophisticate’s bar call.
‘When a customer comes in and orders a sweet drink… I know at once that he’s from the country,’ said a bar owner to the New York Herald in 1897. ‘In all my acquaintance with city men, I know not more than half a dozen who can stand drinking sweet things. They want everything dry; the drier, the better.’
The Martini exemplified this taste for dryness, though by today’s standards, it was still mixed pretty wet: often three parts gin to two parts vermouth, or even just 50:50. (It also often featured a dash of orange bitters, a legacy from the days when cocktails were considered quasi-medicinal drinks.)
Audrey Saunders’s 21st-century Fitty-Fitty Martini is a modern-day nod to this. I think you’ll find it gentler and more aromatic. Think of it as a lunchtime Martini.
No one knows quite why vermouth fell out of favour. One theory is it was just people making a virtue of wartime shortages. But over the decades that followed, the act of not quite-putting-vermouth in your Martini became completely fetishised. Companies sprang up selling vermouth atomisers for spritzing on cocktails; vermouth-soaked ‘Martini stones’ for stirring through gin; and even Martini ‘scales’ for meting out the perfect ratio of ingredients. There were apocryphal tales of people allowing a beam of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat on to a glass of gin, or calling up a friend at cocktail hour and whispering the word ‘vermouth’ down the phone.
By the mid-century, the bone-dry Martini had become a signifier of intellect; a show of political strength. President Roosevelt mixed a (reputedly rather poor) Martini for Stalin in the ultimate Cold War flex.
The Martini’s macho reputation was cemented when it was cast as James Bond’s signature drink. Fleming made 007 a ‘shaken, not stirred’ Martini drinker, it’s thought, to cast him as a rebel. This was followed in the 1960s by the potent three-Martini lunch, a liquid repast that was classed as fully tax-deductible in the belief it made the ‘Mad Men’ of New York’s Madison Avenue more creative.
The Martini’s inexorable road to dryness terminated in the Naked, or See-Thru, Martini – served without a single drop of vermouth (a measure for which bar-goers would often, ironically, pay a premium).
Today, reverence for the canonical recipes remains, but the 21st-century Martini is more enquiring and cosmopolitan
There was only one way for the pendulum to swing, and it was back the other way – and over the course of the 1980s and 90s, the Martini was adulterated with all kinds of synthetic fruit juices and liqueurs. The only thing remotely ‘Martini’ about most of these drinks was the Y-shaped glass that they were served in, and the Martini duly acquired something of a tacky reputation. (One exception to the rule is, of course, the Espresso Martini, which, even though it breaks all the Martini rules, is a stone-cold modern classic.)
With the dawn of the 21st century and the boom in craft gin, though, the classic Martini was rediscovered by a whole new generation.
Today, that reverence for the canonical recipes remains, but the mid-century dogmatism is gone – the 21st-century Martini that I know is more enquiring and cosmopolitan. Using techniques learned from chefs and perfumers, bartenders have imbued it with a whole new palette of flavours, from flint, shiso and seaweed, to pandan leaves, olive oil and oyster shells.
‘Over the past few years, we’ve seen people moving away from big, bold cocktails to more nuanced flavours, like green tea, wines and herbs,’ says Max Venning, co-founder of Three Sheets, one of London’s top cocktail bars, with locations in Dalston and Soho. ‘And the Martini, which is so pure, clean and sophisticated, is a great vehicle for that.’ Three Sheets’ current bestseller is an Aegean Martini made with fig leaf-infused vodka, preserved lemon, lemon thyme and white wine.
But the Martini can also be dirty, in the best possible way. (I think the secret to a good Dirty Martini, though, is to serve it with just a splash of olive brine, rather than half a jar of olives muddled in.) I was recently seduced by the smouldering Cigarette Martini at Tigre, Maison Premiere’s new bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which is made with a host of subtly smoky spirits. The waitress, aptly, described it as tasting ‘like kissing someone who’s just smoked a cigarette’.
Of course, it’s not just the taste that makes the Martini great, or its powerful effects – it’s everything that goes into the ritual as well. Why else would people queue up nightly to spend £35 on a Martini at Mayfair’s Connaught Bar? Or travel halfway across the world to have gin and vermouth mixed by Hidetsugu Ueno, owner of High Five in Ginza and arguably Tokyo’s most celebrated bartender?
The clink of crystal-clear ice, the zesting of lemons, the flamboyant, overhead pour – these are the things that elevate a simple glass of gin and vermouth to the realm of elixir. The Martini is a drink bound up in recondite rules and steeped in superstition to a far greater degree than other classics like the Negroni, the Manhattan or the Old Fashioned.
I often get asked what my perfect Martini is. I usually dodge the question, because my perfect Martini changes from day to day, and sometimes over the course of a single evening.
And that’s because the Martini is a recipe that journeys with you, it’s not a formula that’s fixed. It’s an icon you can make truly your own – and that is why it’s a classic.
The Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon (Quadrille 2024) is in stores now RRP £18.99
