|
All shook up
The martini has survived the ups and downs of a century, though James Bond would sneer at some of the current drinks called by its venerable name.
By AMY ABBOTT
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 14, 2000
[Times files: Thomas M. Goethe / 2000]
|
Consignment shops have taken back the saddle shoes, and Old Navy has reclaimed the imposters who once posed as cool cats, carousing in the nightclubs in zoot suits and sipping bottled water. Cigars have been extinguished and swing is dead.
A time that once was has become a thing of the past. Again.
But as on the morning after a night to remember, people are clinging to the memory of platinum blondes and debonair gents by the stem of their martini glasses. Yes, the sparkling clear nectar of the urban professional has been held over by popular demand. Martinis are here to stay. Or at least their bastardized counterparts. These aren't the typical straight-up, extra dry concoctions pictured in Tanqueray magazine ads. They're fruity, colorful and have goofy names.
There's cranberry instead of vermouth. Grapes instead of olives. Rum instead of gin or vodka.
Yes, that's right. Rum.
Even Tampa's sacred Bern's Steakhouse has a Gordon's martini that calls for vodka, a splash of port and a blue cheese-stuffed olive.
However, like Darwin's natural selection, the martini follows a course prescribed by its environment.
One of the first recorded martini recipes was found in a bartender's guide printed in 1887. "Professor" Jerry Thomas, the author, was rumored to have invented the shimmering cocktail for a miner passing through San Francisco to the town of Martinez. The original Martinez cocktail called for a dash of bitters, two dashes of maraschino, one wine glass of vermouth, two lamps of ice, one pony of Old Tom Gin and a wedge of lemon.
Amazingly enough, this spawned more than a century of martini drinking and thousands of variations.
By the 1920s, martinis had become drier. The version many people relate to Frank Sinatra and James Bond came from this era. The lemon evolved into an olive. Gum syrup was obsolete, and what the heck was a lamp of ice anyhow?
Meanwhile, Americans sent to fight two world wars contributed to the martini's global popularity. By the 1930s, with the end of Prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression, everyone longed to follow in the footsteps of the rich and famous, and the demand for gin was at an all-time high.
As time ticked on, tea times became happy hours. Drinking was a social activity. And the martini continued to grow as a status symbol.
Martinis, like fast cars and fine wine, are not all created equal.
To distinguish one's martini from the masses, the elite began getting picky with their libations. They wanted each drink they had to be tailored to their precise taste. "Shake it, but don't bruise it" came to the scene.
Dennis Wolfe is an avid martini drinker and member of the Tampa Martini Club, which meets each month in different area restaurants. He takes his shaken for the tiny bits of ice that keep his drink colder longer, but it goes beyond that.
"The one most important thing is to have a chilled glass," he said. "If the glass isn't chilled, there's no point."
Martini purists still abound in today's avant-garde cocktail lounges, but they have their competition.
Mangroves in south Tampa has long had a martini list with such ingredients as Licor 43 for the Key lime pie martini. The Cosmopolitan (vodka with cranberry and lime juice) is a known stepping stone for former strawberry daiquiri drinkers. Any respectable home bartender knows how to make a chocolate martini, and even the hoitiest of hoity-toity martini lounges in San Francisco and Seattle have given awards to people who have used rum in their martinis.
Martini ingredients today vary greatly, but the price is another story. If you were, by some fluke of nature, drinking a well martini made with gin that goes for $3.25 a pop, you would most likely be charged up to $1 more simply because the gin was in a martini, which is more work to make than a simple highball.
Most avid martini drinkers would never mutter the words, "Oh, whatever" if they were asked what kind of gin they preferred. So they spend $5 to $8 a glass (a martini at Bern's can set you back $9.50). Martini connoisseurs are label-centric.
They absolutely must have Beefeater's, or they have to have Ketel One. No substitutes. What else they put into it is anyone's guess.
Or taste.
Back to Weekend
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
|
