So simple, yet so complicated

The Martini

Overview:
Is there a more storied cocktail than the martini?  Does there exist a drink about which more songs have been sung, more novels written, more blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Get over it, folks.  It's a drink.  Granted, it's a really nice drink, and one of my personal favorites, but jeez, can some people just suck all the fun out of it.  My niece's husband, for instance.  He's a good guy, and he likes nothing more than to make a nice martini, but he is one of these quasi-autistic types who always has to follow THE RULES.  Cancer researchers don't put the effort into their work that this guy does into making a martini.  Everything must be calculated to the milliliter, and he actually uses the stopwatch on his Rolex to time the shaking process.  Sigh.

Are his martinis good?  Yeah, they're pretty good.

Is it worth waiting through a ceremony as long, complicated, and ultimately painful as a bris to drink one?
Well, in the end, yeah, I suppose, because he always insists on buying the booze, and one of my rules is, "I'll put up with a lot for free drink."  Especially since one area in which he and I see eye-to-eye is our mutual disdain for cheap shoddy booze.

Having said that, I think that people who overthink the process too much run the risk of taking all the fun and spontaneity out of things.  You can say that for most of the fun things in life: Blues; sex;video games; driving like a fool; and especially drink.  (I can't think of anything else for that list at the moment.)

Art, as someone famous whose name I can't be arsed to look up on Wikipedia at the moment once said, is all about knowing which mistakes to keep.  I prefer a more... dynamic creation process in my mixology, which allows for more exciting events and makes the whole thing into a journey of discovery.

Also, I'm really impatient and don't like waiting for stuff.  Here we go.

Booze Requirements:
I think we can all agree, except for those of us who don't, that the most important aspect of the martini is the gin.  For one thing, if it doesn't have gin in it, then it's not a martini.  It might be something else, and it might be delicious, but the one ironclad rule is that Martinis Must Have Gin.  And Vermouth.

I am a huge fan of gin, despite the fact that I always drink a lot of it and then wake up three days later swearing at a waitress in a Perkins Cake-N-Steak hundreds of miles from my home.  Until recently, I lived in Kyoto, Japan, and there are many hilarious stories involving me and the consumption of massive amounts of gin.  Someday I will email my friends who still live there and ask them if they can remember those stories.

So my point, belabored and forgotten as it is, is that you must have some gin.  It further follows that, if you're going to need some gin, it might as well be good gin, and following this line of logic to its inevitable conclusion, we find that if you're going to have some good gin, it might as well be bloody goodgin.

So we got some Hendrick's.

The vermouth we got is Noilly Prat Extra Dry.  I like this vermouth for two reasons.  First, it makes a nice martini.  Second, I enjoy pronouncing the name incorrectly: "Noy-lee PRATT."  I hope that in doing so, I am causing a Frenchman somewhere to involuntarily shudder.  And that's nice.

Mixers:
One of the many aspects of a martini's awesomeness is that it is the very best kind of cocktail, namely, one sort of booze mixed with another sort of booze, with nothing to water down the kick.  The only extra thing you need is ice. 

Accoutrements:
A martini shaker, no matter what people will tell you, really isn't needed to make a martini.  You can whack one up in a pint glass, or a Tupperware pitcher, or, as my brother and I once did while camping, by mixing the components together in an empty (but well-rinsed) Gatorade bottle and sticking it outside the cabin in the snow for fifteen minutes.

But I like the classic shaker.  It looks like something Raymond Loewy might have designed, and, for all I know, did.  (It turns out he did the interior of Skylab.)  And nothing says Serious Drinker like owning your own martini glasses and cocktail shaker.  Also, we already had one in the house.  I think I bought it years ago.

Preparation:
This is the tricky part, if you're my niece's husband.  Or it's the fun part, if you're me.
Step one: Put some ice into the shaker.
Step two: Put some gin in the shaker.
Step three: Add some vermouth. 

Okay, wait a minute, hold on.  There is a raging debate, all over the world, about the "correct" ratio of gin to vermouth.  The vehemence that at times rages over this discussion is repellent to those of us of a delicate disposition.  Wikipedia tells us that the original ratio could be as low as 2:1, but that 3:1 was more common in the Old Days.  Nowadays, a 5:1 ratio is the accepted standard.  Richard Hooker and William Butterworth, who wrote the M*A*S*H novels, claimed that Hawkeye and Trapper would pour gin into the glass and simply lay a delicate mist over the top.

Which is correct?

Whichever one you personally think tastes the best.

You should probably use less vermouth than gin; other than that, you're on your own.  I myself prefer a very loose 5:1 ratio.

Step four: Shake (or stir; whatever, Ian Fleming).
Step five: Serve with, and this is important, whatever the hell you want to garnish it with.  This is another Vietnam that I want no part of, thank you so much.  Olives?  Fine.  Teeny onions?  Groovy.  A live nightingale skewered on a sparkplug wire?  FINE.  Watch me not care.

Here's the secret to a good martooni, kids.  If you use the aforementioned Bloody Good Gin and an immediately identifiable brand of Dry Vermouth (Noilly Prat or Martini & Rossi are both perfectly acceptable), then it's going to taste just fine.

The difference, of course, between Just Fine and Gloria In Excelsis Deo is something that can only be accomplished through extensive experimentation.

And that's the fun part.

Assessment:
It's a martini, baby.  Martinis are like women: each one is different; each one is beautiful in its own way; and too many of them will make you crazy and broke.

I would however, like to say a word on the topic of Hendrick's Gin. 

And that word is "YES." The mild botanicals and cucumber infusion in Hendrick's make a damned tasty martini.  Summer is traditionally High Gin Season for me, and I look forward to sitting on the front porch of my house this next summer and drinking Hendrick's G&Ts while listening to Chet Baker until I reach a state of cool heretofore associated only with penguins.  I am part Scots, and I can say now that my people have mastered three types of booze, and all the types of drinking.