A few days ago, I launched the eighth in my current series of iPhone/iPad drink apps: The Martini Cocktail, curated by @RobertSimonson (shameless plug #1)
This new app is nominally a companion to—or perhaps a parallel exploration to—Simonson’s own new book The Martini Cocktail: A Meditation on the World’s Greatest Drink, with Recipes (shameless plug #2):
Meanwhile, I sit here drinking this Sweet Martini (not technically in the app, but it’s a 2:1 with Royal Dock and Ransom Sweet Vermouth), …
… and, well, see, I have an agenda with this new app, and this is as good a time as any to reveal it:
I want you to start drinking Sweet Martinis.
The thing is, the Sweet Martini isn’t really sweet, (assuming you don’t add gum syrup). The Sweet Martini is simply a Martini made with red Italian vermouth, or white Chambéry vermouth, or even an Italian bianco vermouth. Maybe it’s a little off dry, but it ain’t sweet. It’s definitely richer. It’s rounder. It is fucking delicious.
Today, we have a sprawling wealth of red vermouths and white vermouths on the market, and they’re way more diverse and interesting than the dry vermouths. Sweet vermouth is not just for brown spirits. Buy some good sweet vermouth mix it with your gin!
My drink of choice is a Martini, and my spirit of choice has always been gin. I find myself leaning toward a “Sweet Martini” or a Gin & It after dinner if I am not in the mood for a Manhattan. There is a restaurant down the street from me that serves a lovely “Gin and Italian” for happy hour made with a local gin, but that may be the only time I have seen it on a menu.
I am all for this! More Martinis all around and make them sweet if the time is right! And that is a lovely glass @martin.
Noah Rothbaum’s and David Wondrich’s Life Behind Bars is always worth listening to. This episode—Are the Manhattan & the Martini the same Cocktail—is particularly gratifying to me for fairly obvious reasons.
A couple weeks ago, @Splificator and I gave a brief, well-received seminar at Martini Expo in Brooklyn on the origin and early years of the Martini. We are sharing the timeline handout we assembled, which features some of the choice newspaper quotes that @splificator has unearthed to shine a light on the 1870s and 1880s.
The crucial points are that the Martini and Manhattan (and Metropolitan) were logical mashups of the old, well-established Cocktail and the newish, but also established Vermouth Cocktail (often erroneously known, in those days, as the Vermont Cocktail), and as such, what we call the Martini and Manhattan (today) were originally one drink (just like the Cocktail, regardless of base, is one drink). Indeed, the naming was all over the place, not helped by the moving target that was “gin” in that era. The question of “who invented the Martini” may be the wrong question, as “inventing new drinks” was barely yet a thing at all (exceptions: Crusta, Japanese Cocktail). Popularization of these mashups—drink stylings—seems to inexorably lead back to the gentlemens’ social clubs of the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. and it took a while for the naming conventions to settle out.
The Turf Club seems to have been a name in search of a drink. May not have helped that the actual New York Turf Club was short-lived.
And that is a lovely glass