Anatomy of a Martini

The Martini is probably the most famous of all cocktails, not least due to a certain secret service agent (although his way of drinking a martini is undoubtedly unconventional, and to me, is not a martini at all- but more on that later!). However, martini has been well-known long before the age of secret service and spy thrillers- indeed, H. L Mencken described the martini in the early twentieth century as the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet. Its two primary components are gin and dry vermouth. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

Gin, which is a juniper-flavoured spirit, is the base spirit in a martini. Gin traces its history to a medicinal juniper liquor in early medieval Europe, gradually becoming an alcoholic drink. The immediate ancestor to the gin is Genever (often called Dutch gin), a spirit made by distilling malt wine and flavoured using juniper berries and other herbs and spices like anise, caraway, angelica and orris root. Jenever was commonly distilled by the Dutch and Flemish distillers, which gradually transformed into the modern gin in England, leading to a gin craze in the eighteenth century.

The contemporary geopolitics played an important role in the English craze for gin- the Glorious Revolution and the restoration of William the Orange, the ruler of the Dutch Republic, to the English throne, which allowed unlicensed gin production in England and imposed a heavy excise duty on all imported spirits. This led to immense popularity of gin among the poor, and soon gin was blamed for various social problems and regulated more strictly.

Gin-type drinks was originally made by distilling a malt wine infused with juniper berries and other herbs, and thus had a distinct malty flavour. In the eighteenth century, a slightly drier, but still sweet style of gin (often with added sugar) called Old Tom Gin originated.  Modern Genevers still possess this characteristic malty note, but the advent of the column still in the early nineteenth century allowed for the production of neutral spirits, resulting in an even drier spirit, which gradually evolved into the London Dry style of gin common today.

Gin and other gin-type spirits usually made by two methods- either by simply adding botanicals and flavouring agents to a neutral spirit, or by redistilling a distilled spirit with address botanicals. Juniper is the common ingredient and the dominant one in classic gin, but numerous other herbs and spices are used including citrus peels, anise, angelica and orris root, licorice, coriander, cubeb, savory, and many more.

Modern contemporary gins have a different dominant flavour other than juniper, and important examples of this category includes the ubiquitous cucumber and rose flavoured Hendricks gin, to the smoked chestnut and smoked salt flavoured nginious! Recent years have also seen the rise of barrel-aged gin, although they are often less commonly used in the cocktail scene.

Both martini and old-fashioned use what can be classified as the aromatic-type modifiers like aromatized fortified wines or bitters. We have already come across bitters while discussing the old fashioned. Fortified wines are made by adding a distilled spirit (usually grape brandy) to wines, and can be made in different styles including port, sherry, madeira, marsala and more.

Although the drier fortified wines, including the dry sherries can all be used as modifiers, the most common modifiers of this type are the aromatized wines, which are fortified wines flavoured with herbs, spices, fruits, and other flavourings. In the European Union, an aromatized wine must have an alcohol content between 14.55 and 22%, and vermouth is the most common of the aromatized wines. It was initially used as a medicine, but later became an aperitif, with the modern vermouth tracing its origin to Turin in Italy.

The recipes of vermouth vary widely, with manufacturers having proprietary recipes and keeping their precise formulae a secret, but they can be categorized in two main categories- the sweet (or red or Italian) vermouth, usually containing 10-15% sugar, and dry (or white or French) vermouth, usually containing less than 4% sugar. Vermouths can contain a large variety of botanicals, including citrus peel, clove, chamomile, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, hyssop and many more. Initially, vermouths contained wormwood as an ingredient, but the prohibition of wormwood in the early twentieth century drastically reduced its use, and it is only seen in some artisanal products.

Depending on the flavouring agents used, aromatized wines can also be classified into different types, two of the main ones being quinquina and americano. Although similar to vermouth in many ways, quinquina uses cinchona bark as a flavouring ingredient, and americano uses gentian root. Lillet and Dubonnet are popular examples of quinquina, whereas Cocchi Americano is the most popular americano.

Some of these fortified wines, like Lillet, can also have fruit liqueurs added in instead of being infused with botanicals. Some other commonly drunk aperitifs like Suze (a gentian root flavoured drink) can also be used in a way similar to aromatized wine as modifiers in cocktails, but they are actually distilled spirits, thus resulting in a stronger flavour.

The Martini is a cocktail of gin and dry vermouth- the gin as the base spirit and the vermouth as the modifier. The drink is stirred with ice, and served ice-cold in a martini glass with a lemon twist or an olive as the common garnish. Although the drink appears to be a two-ingredient cocktail, the spray of the essential oil from the lemon peel or the saltiness of the olive plays a vital role in the drink; the absence of either results in a much ‘rougher’ drink, and to me, one of vastly inferior quality. The fragrance of lemon oil, or the slight savouriness of the olives justifies their role as balancer in the drink.

The Martini has more variations than probably any other drink out there. Next week, we will deal with Martini variations, discuss shaking vs stirring, cocktail glassware, and a lot more.