My quest to discover the joys, and narrowly avoid the perils, of alcohol continues. This day: the martini.
My father hates gin. Not like I hate close-minded creationists, no, like I hate drowning. He claims, and I'd imagine he's not lying, that the
smell of gin, all on its lonesome, makes him ill enough to puke. There's a whole story behind that (which I've heard), but simply, I didn't come to gin with the sort of parental smile and nod that welcomed whiskey and wine into our midst.
Not that that stopped me, or even made my dad say I shouldn't try it. I just had this tale of woe flitting around in my head.
I started, as usual, with just the straight liquor -- a teeny, airplane sized bottle of Tanqueray (I guess that's how you spell it). I daub into a fluted wine glass, and sniff -- that's a lot like rubbing alcohol, hmm, and potpourri -- then drink. It's, er, odd. I could see how people enjoy it, I guess, but they enjoy coffee, too, and I most decidely don't. But, let's remember, straight tequila didn't woo me either, but tequila + citrus did, so, on to mixing. I've already had a g and t (as Bertie would affectionately call the gin and tonic), and it was atrocious. Of course, g&t was originally produced by desperate British military officers in India and other malaria-stricken countries, solely to help the quinine go down more smoothly (quinine is still in tonic today,
for flavoring, they claim).
The martini. A classic, and it turns out, particularly American drink. This doesn't bode well for me, as I've shown a subconscious migration toward, er, not American drinks in the past. Though rum is arguable, I suppose. Modern Americana, then. Right. Originally, the martini was two parts gin, one part vermouth (differing places used different sorts -- sweet vermouth with sweet gin [a British gin popular with the drunken masses in the late 1700s and early 1800s] is one example), now, it's traditionally 5 to one: two ounces of gin and 1/2 ounce white vermouth for a single drink, garnish with differing things. The three standard garnishes are: olive, the original, cherry, presumably for sweet-tooths like me, and white onions; stories abound about the white onion, apocryphal or no, they all point to someone tricking associates by ordering water with their martinis and using the odd onion to differentiate the chicanery from the drunkenness.
I made a bit of a mistake to start with, buying a bottle of sweet vermouth, but I went back out and got the proper kind. I dropped two ice cubes into my mixing glass, then poured in the half-ounce of vermouth. Two ounces of gin later, I stirred the concoction and strained the drink into a highball (I don't own any martini glasses; if I decide I want to drink margaritas from them, I'll get some, I suppose, but that's spoiling what little storytelling tension I have here). Yes, James Bond orders his martinis incorrectly, you should stir drinks with only liquor -- shaking is useful for fruit additions only. Of course, some people say it's all right, as he primarily drinks vodka, not gin, but still, the shaking is adding more water from the breaking up of the ice, so he's ordering a watered-down drink and trying to be fancy about it.
It turns out, however, sweet vermouth just more vile than the normal stuff, a comparative, mind. Normal vermouth is as bad, for me. So, the martini is right out. I tried with olive and cherry (I hate onions); it was no good. I'm not well-disposed to gin, but I don't quite hate it, yet. I'm not sure I can stomach the stuff on its own, really (I bought a bottle of Seagram's, as the teeny Tanqueray wasn't enough for a single martini, let alone two, so I've had two brands, London and American).
Does a cosmo use gin, or vodka? I may hate the martini, but I still believe you can't call a mixture of vodka and vermouth (or anything else) a martini -- it requires gin.
Alas for the martini, the drink with so many stories attached. Churchill famously felt bowing towards France added enough vermouth to the drink; General Patton pointed his gin bottle toward Italy. Hitchcock glanced at a bottle of vermouth, but didn't open it, and Hemingway preferred what he called martini "Montgomery," mixed 15 to 1 -- the odds, he claimed, Field Marshall Montgomery awaited before going into battle.
Of course, these anecdotes all point towards just not adding vermouth. So, chilled gin as a martini? With a garnish, I guess. I'll try one of these days, when the taste (and smell) of the vermouth leaves me the hell alone.
