Let’s Drink to the Return of the Martini

I began drinking about the time Hitler was taking the fun out of France and I quickly settled on the martini as the basic drink.

At its highest it was a noble drink, and even at its lower levels it was usually good. It was so universally in demand that a bartender could hardly survive without being reasonably adept, and thus it was a pretty safe drink to order in any respectable bar.

“The Hour,” an amusing and dogmatic little book by Bernard De Voto (a man better known to the literati as the erudite editor of the Saturday Review of Literature than as a celebrant of ardent spirits) was inspired by the martini, the hour in question being the cocktail hour.

If the martini regains its rightful place in American culture a new edition of “The Hour” will be called for. Bartenders who have not that classic drink in their repertoire will learn from the book how “the proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory.”

The essential thing in creating a great martini, in addition to the best ingredients, is care, loving care at every step.

One of my favorite bartenders practiced his art at Morton’s, a restaurant of no great distinction in the vicinity of the University of Chicago. Kernie’s name was legend from 51st Street to the Midway and beyond, and from the lakefront it spread westward unto the approaches of Cottage Grove Avenue.

Kernie began preparations in the afternoon. He cut top and bottom off large lemons and worked the entire rind free with the handle of a spoon. It was then cut into strips with a sharp knife. (Cutting thin slices from a whole lemon loses much of the fragrant oils before the peel reaches the drink.)

If I recall right, Kernie used a ratio of about 2 1/2 to 1 in favor of gin. Everything was cold. The mixing glass and serving glass were cold. The ice was in large cubes smoking-cold from the freezer--reusing ice was unthinkable. Gin and vermouth were at cool room temperature.

The drink was stirred until it acquired the oily texture of perfection. A very large stuffed olive (chilled) went into the glass at the moment of serving. It was on a round, polished, wooden toothpick: no Damascene blades of plastic or miniature yataghans or claymores. The drink was ready to be put in front of the admiring and grateful customer.

Literary figures of a senior sort mention martinis more often than any other drink and often recall a favorite bartender or bar, preferably in some outre place. Alec Waugh found that “most sophisticated of cocktails” at Porte’s tea shop in Tangier. His assertion that “by some miracle the drink maintains its coolness for nearly half an hour” suggests that Waugh’s talents lay more in the literary than in the thermodynamic direction.

I have never been to Tangier, but a decade ago I had a chance to try Rupert Croft-Cooke’s anointed bar in the venerable Reid’s Hotel in Madeira, in the Atlantic southwest of Tangier. I was there for a local product, the wine, but felt I must try a martini though I no longer drank them regularly. It was, alas, pedestrian despite the stately setting with its view of the harbor far below. The legendary Fred had departed.

For some reason, literary invention falters when great men reflect on the martini; their favorite is baldly called “the best in the world.” Somerset Maugham found his at the Palace Hotel in Guatemala City, but those were happier days.

Those who have vouchsafed us the martini of their heart seem chiefly to have been British. I recall no martinis in Thomas Wolfe, though he was captivated by the notion of Scotch in iced tea. Robert Benchley was definitely a martini man. The tipple of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s choice I neither know nor care to know.

During a year in New York just before mid-century I favored the bar of a seedy hotel on or about 34th Street. It had broken-down overstuffed chairs that constantly discharged their stuffing and inhabitants--in those days every cubic foot of Manhattan Island domiciled at least 14 cockroaches.

Back in Chicago two favorites were the spacious bar of the old Kungsholm restaurant, presided over by a tall Danish master, and the cozy bar of the Windemere East, where a dignified Swede of equal talent was in charge.

The decline of the martini paralleled the demand for ever drier drinks. That was silly because gin and vermouth were completely dry, so that vermouth content had nothing to do with dryness. What people wanted was a blander drink.

Up until the ‘60s vermouths had highly herbal flavors, and each brand had its distinctive formula. The vermouth makers obliged, but too late to buck the trend. By the time they had eliminated almost all flavorings from their blends, recipes were calling for proportions of 5 or 10 to 1. People bragged that they used an eyedropper to measure vermouth, or they merely genuflected toward the bottle.

The extremity of the trend had arrived--and trends have always to go to extremes--when I heard a handsome woman at an adjoining table order “a vodka martini on the rocks, no olive, no lemon and no vermouth.” What she wanted was a slug of straight vodka on ice, but didn’t have the nerve to call for it in the sedate Hotel Bel-Air bar.