Cocktails

The martini is, of course, the greatest cocktail of them all, so simple yet so fiendishly hard to get right. It’s an iconic sip, one that, in the words of Lawrence Durrell, ‘fairly whistles through the rigging.’ When I talk about the martini I mean dry, bone-dry, with the vermouth (Martini Extra Dry or Noilly Prat) merely hinted at, rather than sloshed in with a liberal hand. Luis Buñuel, that most fantastic of film-makers, suggested ‘simply allowing a ray of sunshine to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin.’ Winston Churchill thought this a step too far, instead allowing that a mere glance at the vermouth bottle while mixing one’s drink is easily ample. Then there’s the method of ringing up a friend in Sydney, from London, and putting the receiver next to a bottle of gin. Down in Oz, your mate should do the same with the vermouth. If these methods seem a little too extreme, then a fine mist, spritzed from a small atomiser onto the glass, does the trick. As does swilling out the glass with vermouth. You want an echo of vermouth, no more.