Clive Watson | Contributor

No matter how limitless the variations on this ur-cocktail, everyone’s favorite style isn’t just the best way — it’s the only way. And as variations are so numerous, it’s very, very rare that any two martini fans will actually agree completely on “how it should be done.” In this way, cocktail connoisseurs are like religious fundamentalists. 

But of course, most representatives of liquid culture know how to ape subtlety, if not in fact achieve it. Most martini-related altercations therefore lead to loads of shocked expressions, eye-rolling, incredulous follow up questions, up-sleeve snickering, and worst of all — resentful cocktailing.

Can anyone think of a worse fate for a cocktail of expensive, delicious ingredients than that it be made or consumed without delight? It would rather have been poured down the drain. So in the interest of keeping good gin and vodka from going to waste, let’s try and settle this.

Won’t someone please think of the gin?

So what’s a real martini? Can we come to some sort of consensus on this point? Our chances don’t look so good. But in the interest of forward motion, I’m going to give it the old college try.

Is it something, or rather anything, served in a martini glass? I’m going to say no. You can call that mixture of vanilla vodka, chocolate liqueur and Kahlua a martini if you want to, and I won’t even throw down a flag. But for the purposes of this inquiry, I’m going to limit my scope to the family of drinks descended from the first martini.

This is a bit problematic, of course, as we don’t really know whether the drink originated at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco in 1862, or at the Knickerbocker in New York City in 1911. But the earliest recipes, like many modern takes, called for gin and vermouth.

Here’s the difference: it called for sweet gin, sweet vermouth, and twice as much vermouth as gin. It also often included bitters, a twist and a cherry. Sounds closer to a Manhattan than a martini, doesn’t it? 

But of course, the Manhattan was originally nothing more than a variation on the martini, so all of this begins to make a surprising amount of sense. Trace classic cocktails back far enough, and you’ll find that they all come from a relatively small gene pool. (Spirit + fortified wine + bitters = cocktail).

So the first martini has historical cred, which is considerable, and I’d try it at least once. I must confess though that if it once again took the world by storm, I wouldn’t be too happy. I like my plethora of martini options, even though they confound me at times. And the stop-motion history of the drink has provided us with a whole host of heirloom martini varietals, as it were, each of which has its merits if we’re willing to keep our minds open and our palates adventurous.

From its mysterious time and place of origin to the mid-twentieth century, and for various reasons, the martini morphed gradually into a very different animal. Sweet gin turned to London dry, sweet vermouth to dry vermouth, and gradually, the proportions flip-flopped. More and more gin was added to less and less vermouth until we arrived at what we might call the Bond era, which also ushered in the variation (or deviation, if you prefer) that is the vodka martini, also called the vodkatini, or stalini.*

As Wikipedia’s martini entry proposes, this shift may have been fueled by the alconomics of the Prohibition era, when illegally produced gin was easy to come by and, we presume, good vermouth was not. If this is in fact true, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time the tail of supply and demand wagged the dog of the gourmet palate. 

Regardless of what caused the shift, once martini fans became accustomed to a much stiffer drink, you can well imagine their reluctance to return to old proportions. As a friend of mine once observed, the fellow sitting down the bar from you who orders a very, very dry vodka martini is essentially drinking a big glass of chilled liquor, which offers efficiency, if not nuance.

From here, the spurning of vermouth continued right on up into absurdity. Kingsley Amis, for example, whose cocktail advice is always entertaining if not always sound, endorses 16 parts gin to one part vermouth — just enough vermouth so that the flavor of the gin will not remain entirely unaltered. He specifically recommends Martini Rossi, incidentally, which caused me to sprain both of my eyebrows.

And then it happened: the trend reached its logical conclusion when certain establishments reduced the vermouth to ceremonial gesture. They took to merely waving the bottle over the shaker — or so they swore. The only good news in this development was that the trend could go no further. And though these minimalist martinis held sway for several colorless decades, the pendulum has finally begun to swing back in the opposite direction.

* This last title, on a side note, must have been devised by an enemy of the vodka martini. While this intense libation does possess certain tyrannical properties, do we really need to take a mental trip to the Gulag every time we’d like an intense blast of salt, ice and vodka? True, the drink has the rare power to evoke a meal of salted herring in the middle of the tundra (all of the best parts, mind you), but with scores of Russian heroes and mythic figures at hand, why reach for Stalin? Why not order a Pushkini, or a Tolstini? Even a Rasputini would be an improvement. Any suggestions, dear readers?

Up next: Some Like It Wet

Clive Watson stirs, shakes, strains, savors and waxes incoherent at triplesequitur.com.