The Dry Martini.

There are many grate cocktails in the world, house hold names that you have heard even if you have never been in a bar, the Bloody Mary, Heavy Wall Banger and Moscow Mule to mane a few.

And the best are them most simple and refreshing like the Screwdriver. Two parts vodka 4 parts orange juice over ice in a glass with a slice of orange. This simple drink is refreshing and is drunk all over the world. It has a history as well. The story goes that an oil worker in America used to make the drink and then as he was hard at work drilling for oil stirred his drink with a screwdriver. The reason for this is that it was the best tool for the job as he did not have a swizzle stick on the rig.

Also for me a cocktail must hark back to the bygone age of the roaring twenty and thirties. An age when ever thing seemed possible and probably was. So for me the cocktail that sum up all of that and more is The Dry Martini.

Now this drink can bring that bar in to a heated debate from the moment you mention it. And so it should as it does matter what you do to it and how you like it.

Do you have it stirred or shaken, Italian or French vermouth and how much vermouth should you use. This is all the tip of the iceberg. So now I will give my recipe for my perfect dry martini and I know that this will make a lot of people unhappy but I’m going to do it any way.

Take a jug and fill it with ice. Then add the gin, Beefeater London gin is my gin of choice. Now you must add the vermouth, Noilly Prat, a French vermouth. Now for this martini you need quite a splash. Not a full measure, about one tenth vermouth to one measure of gin. And now I go and rune it for any real martini enthusiast. I take the glass that the martini is going to be severed in and drop in a few drops of angostura bitters in to it. Then take the glass and shake them out so all that is left is the very fine residue from the bitters. The rub the rim of the glass with a slice of lemon rind. Add a green olive on a cocktail stick. And add the martini after stirring jut before I pour it.

It is the combination of a good strong London gin, as compared to Plymouth gin that has a lot more subtle fruit flavours to it. And the Noilly Prat that has been aged in an oak barrel that gives this drink more depth and refinement than any other.

So next time you hear some one say a martini is just a glass of gin with ice and a bit of vermouth and nothing more then you can tell them it is much, much more.