There’s one cocktail that Jake O'Brien Murphy is deeply passionate about – and it’s personal.
America’s contributions to the wider human race include the aeroplane, the atomic bomb and the gastric band. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Bob Ross. The Simpsons, jazz and planting a flag on the moon. It always struck me as a particularly American thing to do; arrive on the untouched celestial frontier and immediately leave litter. Yet none of this is more fundamentally groundbreaking than the Martini. No one knows the true origin story of the Martini but, like so much of what makes America great, it was almost certainly created by immigrants.
Of all of the drinks I am overly fond of – the Tom Collins, the Harvard, the Colorado Bulldog – none occupies a place in my heart quite like the Martini. It is, hyperbole fully intended, the greatest cocktail that exists; now, then and in perpetuity. I love it dearly because the Martini isn’t passive in the way many other drinks are – it requires you to have an opinion and demonstrate some agency in your own human enjoyment.
Mine is a Vodka Martini, bone dry, with a lemon discard. I prefer the vodka to be Polish, and the grain to be rye. The infinitesimally small amount of vermouth should be French and the lemons should be unwaxed and Italian – ideally Limone dell’Etna. I prefer it to be taken just short of what is considered optimum dilution. However, I will drink a Gin Martini in a pinch. Anything in excess of a 50/50 is only acceptable before midday. A Tequila Martini suits me fine, though truth be told, I'd prefer a slightly more robust vermouth and proportionately much more of it. I’d never order a Dirty Martini for all of the same reasons I wouldn’t dip Monster Munch into holy water – as an agnostic, I’m not fond of tampering with divinity. I feel a genuine stab of pain if I see, or hear, someone order a Martini shaken not stirred. Nothing proves that we should weigh our words carefully more than Ian Flemming when writing Casino Royale. The Vesper Martini is James Bond’s greatest antagonist and is far more notorious than Le Chiffre, Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Mini Me ever could be.
Margins for error
As much as I love drinking Martinis, I love making them too. I’ve always thought it is the hardest drink to make and the easiest to fuck up. There are very few places to hide with a Martini in the way you could, for example, with an Old Fashioned. You’re dealing in subtlety and nuance; therefore the margins for error become chasms.
Temperature, dilution and texture. The three immutable constants in the greatest drink of all time. Each pulling to go its own way like the Three-Headed Giant in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Stir too slowly, you end up with cold, thin, spirit-flavoured water. Stir too quickly and you have a terse, under-dilute drink with unsympathetic ethanol edges. Goldilocks it just right though and you end up with sweet ambrosia.
To make things a little more complicated, you’re never really ever making the same drink twice. Ask any bartender who has ever worked a busy dispense bar. A Martini isn’t a mechanical movement – it can’t be folded neatly into round-building in the same way its cousins can. It requires an atomic level of attention. The greatest sadness a dispense bartender can know is the execution of perfect liquid filigree only to see it die, second by second as it warms and unravels in the window. The same can be said when you’re mixing drinks for guests, à la minute, at the bar. There’s a subtext to a Martini, there’s lore. As my therapist would say, it requires active listening. People aren’t ordering a Martini, they’re ordering their Martini. Get it right and you’re a bonafide hero. Get it wrong and you’re a villain.
I’d bet my life savings that’s why the Martini has remained intractable for the best part of the last century. It’s personal. You can certainly define a Martini, you can thinly trace its outline if you squint – but after that, it’s altogether unquantifiable. Again, it’s personal. That’s not to say other drinks aren’t; we all have our scotch, cognac and or limecello of choice when it comes to our favourite drinks. So what made the Martini the prime mover for the bacchanalian roll of the dice? I don’t think I can answer that but by Jove, when a Martini is good, is there anything better?
As the famous, still anonymous, quote goes: “I’m not talking a cup of cheap gin splashed over an ice cube. I’m talking satin, fire and ice; Fred Astaire in a glass; surgical cleanliness, insight.… comfort; redemption and absolution. I’m talking MARTINI.’