do you just love martinis?

that is, of course, unless u have 3, followed by a long island iced tea and a shot of soco. that's like a little much

i got jumped on here for saying i hate these awhile back but i like them now

vodka or gin surm

Knew this was a Surmounter thread. I drank these when I first turned 21. I just loved the hell out of them back then. It's probably time for a revisit now that I know how to drink. Martini glasses are a definite DUD though.

i'm not really that into them. i'm more of a manhattan drinker.

I haven't had a martini in like 2 years.

i don't even hate girly drinks (have been known to whip up some bacardi strawberry daquiris in the blender) but i can't stand and shitty fruity drink that takes the -tini suffix. it is just kind of offensive.

sorry that didnt make sense. i need caffeine.

vodka all the way, but the occasional gin is good. i'm getting into manhattans only now

not my preferred drink, but always always a pleasure when the bartender comes correct with the proper way to serve one.

viz: there's a fine local bar here that, if you specify your martini straight up, will serve you it to you in a half-filled, chilled martini glass. the rest of your drink is presented to you in a small decanter resting in a ice-filled rocks glass. this solves both the brim-spillage problem and allows you to drink the martini at a leisurely pace without worrying about the gin at the bottom of the glass becoming room temperature.

i'm loving dry manhattans at the moment: rittenhouse rye, dry vermouth, twist. sadly the rye is 100 proof, so i can only have two at most before i fall into a complete stupor.

Sex and the City THE MOVIE THE THREAD

Manhattans are my favorite cocktail.

Martinis are delicious when made correctly - 3 parts gin, 1 part vermouth, lemon twist.

there is no such thing as a vodka martini.

There, now that I've got the prick-bastard snobby bullshit out of the way, here is how I mix one for myself.

Pour a bit of vermouth into glass, coat the interior surface, discard excess vermouth.

With a vegetable peeler, remove a strip of zest from a lemon into the glass.

Fetch ice-cold Broker's gin from freezer, shake bottle to aerate gin, pour over lemon zest and vermouth.

Repeat as neccesary.

ooooo lemon

man after my own heart xp

i don't like olives myself, whatever your pleasure and let live etc, but "dirty martinis" i find really fucking disgusting

a strange phenomenon

i'm on the fence

there is no such thing as a vodka martini.

Thank you, truthspeaker.

loving surmounter lately

keeping it positive :D

i understand the saltiness helps cut the boozy taste but with a dirty martini you're basically drinking preservative brine and it tastes like the seawater collected from the bottom of a boat

People wouldn't need to put olives in their martinis to make them taste like something if they just used gin and plenty of vermouth.

hey, coating the interior of the glass is plenty of vermouth!

I prefer Gibsons, but a good Martini is a thing of beauty. I especially like when you fudge a bit and make them with Tom Olives instead of real olives. In a similar vein, I love Parisiennes (use Chambord instead of Vermouth and garnish with a lemon twist). As to the complaint about the glasses upthread, my Martini glasses are not big 'fishbowls' but small and well balanced and I do rather like it when you get the little mini carafe on ice, too.

Not only was the original Martini made with gin but there's no need for Vermouth in vodka since vodka doesn't really taste of anything but alcohol, really, (do a shot of vodka, chilled, Russian style) and the modern fashion for dry Martinis perplexes me somewhat; when made as I DIED notes, the gin and Vermouth turn a Martini into something greater than its parts.

> do a shot of vodka, chilled, Russian style

I like to grind a little pepper into this.

Tomolives, btw.

'there's no need for Vermouth in vodka since vodka doesn't really taste of anything but alcohol'

isnt this kinda the point of a vodka martini? gin is already flavored

i like manhattans normally. i get really pissed when places don't have rye, though.

My wife likes her martinis so dirty they look like swamp water. Cannot drink this.

wow

isnt this kinda the point of a vodka martini? gin is already flavored

I just mean you can dispense with the vermouth entirely afaIac.

All the olive jars in our house are dry.

i like manhattans normally. i get really pissed when places don't have rye, though.

yay! It's gotten a lot better in the past few years, but one of the downsides to liking manhattans so much is not being able to suffer a poor one. Put the Maker's Mark down!

My wife likes her martinis so dirty they look like swamp water. Cannot drink this.

As does mine. She tells the server/bartender "Real dirty. Like old porn star dirty."

wow

i just made one!

it contains vodka, cranberry and lemon.

Truth is beauty, beauty truth
Three parts gin to one vermouth.

The "-tini" suffix on any old cocktail poured into a martini glass makes me cry. A washington apple is not a martini in a different glass. A humble washington apple it remains. I have no problem with non-martinis (of course), but my strong pedantry forces me to get angry at abuse of the martini name.

uh isnt that just a vodka cranberry then?
xp

Movement to call the bloody mary the Tomatini is surely imminent.

kind of... xp

i usually just drink whiskey or vodka/soda, but sometimes i love fruity cocktails like pineapple ginger mojitos, passion fruit martinies, etc.. though i pretend not to

I don't think I've ever actually had a martini.

vodka martini > gin martini

i agree. this one i'm having is very good. it's strong. i think i'll have a martini when i go out tonight, too -- maybe a dirty martini.

I can't believe there's so much love for the Manhattan. My mom used to drink (at least) one (in a tall tall glass) every night. When we went out to dinner she would let me have the cherry from her Manhattan and the taste was so sour it always made me wince. I want to try the Bronx. I wonder why there is no Queens?

what's the Bronx??

st. ides special brew

i like martinis, but experience suggests a maximum limit of two in any given evening. after 3, things get...interesting. (a friend of mine who's a martini aficionado says that in the days of the 3-martini lunch the drinks used to be much smaller, with maybe half the alcohol content of the current full-to-the-brim glasses.)

hey a 3 martini lunch sounds nice!

it's so easy to have 3. they just slip right down.

my favorite thing about lunch at commanders palace (the vegas one since never been to new orleans) was the 25 cent martinis! holllaaa

now that I'm an alcoholic I can dig 'em but back when I had a choice about it I sure hated gin

will serve you it to you in a half-filled, chilled martini glass. the rest of your drink is presented to you in a small decanter resting in a ice-filled rocks glass.

class act

I can't remember where I heard this quoted, probably a demented cafe blackboard.
'martini's are like breasts, one's not enough, two's perfect and three's too many'

er, it's Herb Caen apparently/

having a shaker at home is very dangerous, i must confess.

i'm already wondering what i can do with it tonight... this is probably not a very healthy thought to have at 1pm.

i like martinis, but experience suggests a maximum limit of two in any given evening. after 3, things get...interesting.

has the thread made it this far without the dorothy parker quote?

i like to have a martini, two at the very most.
after three i'm under the table, after four i'm under my host.

The "-tini" suffix on any old cocktail poured into a martini glass makes me cry. A washington apple is not a martini in a different glass. A humble washington apple it remains. I have no problem with non-martinis (of course), but my strong pedantry forces me to get angry at abuse of the martini name.

I try not to be humorless about this, but a 'vodka martini' makes me secretly steam.

Indeed, sir, you are justified.

Lauren's rittenhouse manhattan is a very otm drink. Old fashioned is generally my tipple (rye please) although I would be on rye sours all the times if bars were brave enough to mix with egg. Manhattan is my change-up.

All these drink threads today and I am not allowed.

Shaken martini's make me weep bitter tears about the imbecility of humanity.

My philistine tongue has always wondered at what difference it may make.

What is the difference?

You bruise the booze, i.e. you break off shards of ice which overdilute the drink.

It is all clear now, thank you Ed.

i tried to like these when I was 18ish just because the glass looked so cool but i liked them as much as i like any alcohol which is not at all

You bruise the booze, i.e. you break off shards of ice which overdilute the drink.

-- Ed, Monday, 16 June 2008 17:25 (23 minutes ago) Link

i'm into this, b/c a martini is mainly straight liquor. i don't mind a little bruisin ice-breakin.

Stirring still releases a good amount of water into the drink (I think I heard about 30% somewhere?), but yes the shaking is a bit too much and makes for a bad presentation. I guess it doesn't really matter if you're putting in vodka and cranberry.

I think probably a lot of martini confusion could have been avoided if martini glasses had a different name.

a local Indian restaurant includes the following on their cocktail menu:

Big Apple Mojito Martini
Bacardi Big Apple, sour mix, Sprite

astonishing.

lol

this was the weekend i got everybody else to buy my drinx

I think probably a lot of martini confusion could have been avoided if martini glasses had a different name.

They are also known as "cocktail glasses," but that horse is LONG out of the barn.

i do love martinis. i do love them.

Work had a martini party 2 Fridays back to celebrate a nice big project. The camps were fairly evenly split between the classicists (gin) and the philistines (vodka) and a considerable amount of each ended up in the carpet due to lots of programmers getting rapidly and spectacularly "social" and the usage of really flimsy plastic martini glasses.

firmly in the gin camp. vermouth measure varies every time I make martinis, ideal is somewhere between couple drops and a splash.

twice I've been served martinis w/sweet vermouth -- both times in los angeles restaurants -- and the resulting taste was awful IMO.

twice I've been served martinis w/sweet vermouth -- both times in los angeles restaurants -- and the resulting taste was awful IMO.

I recently tried making one with half sweet and half dry vermouth, because I'd read some classic recipe calling for that. And DEAR GOD was it awful.

That said, has anyone tried a Martinez (an ancestor of the Martini as we know it, combining gin, sweet vermouth, sugar syrup, and bitters)?

I just finished reading The Poisoner's Handbook, which had lots of detail about government-poisoned industrial alcohol that was served in speakeasies during Prohibition, and how lots of cocktails were mostly an attempt to disguise the nasty taste of what passed for "gin". The Martinez sounds like one of them!

how was that book? reviews made it sound interesting.

The Martinez is a great drink and dates back to the 19th century! It should definitely NOT have simple syrup in it, though, here's a good recipe:

The Martinez
1½ ounces Old Tom gin
1½ ounces Dolin sweet vermouth
1 teaspoon maraschino liqueur
2 dashes orange bitters
Garnish with a flamed orange peel

A properly made one tastes like a kind of halfway point between a Martini and a Manhattan.

how was that book? reviews made it sound interesting

graphic and had some very disheartening stories, but fascinating history of the battle between forensic science champions and the corrupt NYC govt. I had always thought that any home-distilled alcohol could be poisonous (pour it through a felt hat, etc), never realized that stemmed from grain alcohol that was intentionally "denatured" (aka poisoned) for industrial use, then redistilled by bootleggers in an attempt to remove the toxic stuff (which never worked well).

just wanna second the martinez, it's an excellent drink and all i would add is it's v. sensitive to your choice of gin and vermouth. vermouth should be FRESH. i've also made them generally without old tom--the best one i ever had was with old raj actually.