19 June: National Martini Day

Today is National Martini Day, so here's the low down on Martini.

1. The Martini is a cocktail made from one part dry vermouth and six parts Gin, served on ice with a garnish of an Olive or a twist of Lemon peel.
2. That's the standard recipe but there are variations. Vodka may be used instead of gin for a vodka Martini. The garnish can be a pickled Onion, in which case the drink is known as a Gibson. The olive may be stuffed with Garlic, blue Cheese or even an anchovy. Strawberries, Orange peel or Apple slices have been used, as have small Octopus tentacles and slices of Truffle. It's all a matter of personal preference.
3. At the Algonquin Hotel in New York City you can get a Martini garnished with a cut diamond. That'll set you back $10,000, but that's not the most expensive Martini in the world. A distillery in Scotland created one that cost £50,000. No diamonds, however, but a holiday on the side.
4. Nobody knows the origin of the Martini, but there are a couple of theories. It may come from a 19th century brand of Italian vermouth, which was marketed under the name Martini after the company's director, Alessandro Martini. The other theory is that the name derives from the California town of Martinez. In the early 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, people used to have cocktails while they waited for the ferry to Martinez. Or it may have been invented in the town itself. We'll never know for sure.
5. A "Martinez Cocktail" was described in Jerry Thomas' 1887 Bartender's Guide, How to Mix All Kinds of Plain and Fancy Drinks. The first official mention was a year later, in the 1888 New and Improved Illustrated Bartending Manual. The 1888 version was made with equal parts gin and sweet vermouth, a drop of Absinthe, a dash of sugar syrup, a drop of orange bitters, and garnished with a cherry.
6. It was 1895 before the dry Martini as we know it was made although even this was different - it had more Vermouth in it. It was in the 1940s that the drink as we know it became popular, and it's all thanks to Mussolini and a prohibitionist French government. The Italian dictator was teetotal and prohibited vermouth making and export and the French government did the same - so vermouth was in short supply.
7. Shaken or stirred? Or thrown? The first Martinis would have been thrown, that is mixed together by letting the drink fall from a glass held as high as possible into another held as low as possible. This is done six or seven times with the higher glass being filled with ice and fitted with a strainer so only the liquid comes out.
8. James Bond may have liked his Martinis shaken not stirred but most Martini experts would say stirring creates a better drink. A shaken Martini may be more dilute and have shards of broken ice in it. A stirred one is better blended. W Somerset Maugham would have gone for stirred every time. He said, “Martinis should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously one on top of the other.”
9. Other big fans of Martinis include Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Frank Sinatra, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock, Winston Churchill and the Royal Family.
10. Two more Martini terms: a dirty Martini contains a splash of olive brine or olive juice and a Burnt Martini is one that’s been doused with a touch of smoky Whiskey.

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