An Ode to Martinis

The pivotal cocktail of the 20th century.

The Martini is a strong drink — it helped us win WWII.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were both famed Martini drinkers. FDR loved the drink so dearly that he travelled with a Martini kit, with which he mixed far more vermouth than is considered proper and garnished his drink with both an olive and a lemon peel; by contrast, Churchill was minimalist and his Martini was allegedly so dry¹ that it was actually just chilled gin. “I would like to observe the vermouth from across the room while I drink my Martini,” he is said to have quipped. By other accounts, Churchill would pour his frigid gin and then “bow in the direction of France.” (A country known for its vermouth and in need of liberation.) In the face of Nazi aggression, the leaders of the free world steeled their nerves with that powerful cocktail nicknamed the Silver Bullet.

Or so goes the myth. This history is true of FDR, who mixed the first legal Martini in the White House after signing the act to repeal Prohibition,² but according to historian Richard Langworth, the Prime Minister did not drink gin at all. “He didn't really like Martinis. He put up with FDR's in the White House because they were the President's ritual (far too much vermouth, too). But he was once observed dumping one into a flowerpot,” Langworth explained. It seems that Churchill preferred watered down scotch. Biographer Andrew Roberts notes, “He ordered his private secretaries to ensure that his whiskies and soda were very weak, so that although people watched him drink from 6pm till very late, it was mostly soda.”

Britain's most renowned Martini drinker also took his cocktail watered down. James Bond's legendary line, “Shaken, not stirred,” irks many mixologists, because shaking the gin and vermouth together over ice dilutes the concoction. Such purists insist that shaking “bruises the gin.”³ I once got into a long argument with a bartender in Denver over my “Vesper,” named for Bond's first love Vesper Lynd. My bartender lectured that all Martinis must be stirred, while I countered that the James Bond Martini must adhere to one of the most celebrated lines in cinematic history.

Statesmen⁴ and spies must both keep their wits about them. Ice melt in their Martinis serves their country and their mission.⁵

Brilliant physicists also shake their Martinis. When J. Robert Oppenheimer was leading the effort to create an atom bomb, he was known for mixing “the most delicious and coldest Martinis,” as one of his friends reminisced. The “Oppie” has a 16-to-1 ratio of gin to vermouth — even more gin than the famously drunk Ernest Hemmingway demanded for his “Montgomery" Martini⁶ — and Oppenheimer’s biographers described his method of shaking his extra dry Martinis “with elaborate ceremony.” His signature technique was dipping the rim of his glasses in a mixture of honey and lime juice. As the director of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer drank better than many of the junior scientists, who invented “a concoction of half lab alcohol and half grapefruit juice mixed in a 32-gallon G.I. can and chilled with a chunk of smoking dry ice.”⁷

Nuclear bombs are widely considered the deadliest warhead in the U.S. arsenal, but Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called the Martini “America's lethal weapon.”⁸

In 1965, infamous private eye Harold “Hal" Lipset testified before a Senate subcommittee about how the Martini could be turned into an eavesdropping gadget.⁹ The bugged Martini “held a facsimile of an olive, which could hold a tiny transmitter, the pimento inside the olive, in which we embedded the microphone, and a toothpick, which could house a copper wire as an antenna. No gin was used — that could cause a short. Our point was that a host could wander through his own party, having drunk his own martini, and pick up the conversations that were directed at him, or leave his glass near a conversation he could then monitor in secret.”¹⁰ His testimony caused a media sensation as Americans marveled at how tiny a surveillance device could be packaged, but the “Spy" Martini probably remained a novelty. Probably.

Cunning and power do not exclusively define the Martini, for it is in equal measure elegant. The polemicist H. L. Mencken declared the Martini “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.” Its slender, art deco glass is an icon of sophistication.

Nevertheless, the Martini is historic for passing through the lips of 20th century power brokers. Who knows how the great conflicts of that era would have shaken out if those men never shook a cocktail mixer? So when we raise that svelte goblet, let us partake in Oppenheimer's trademark toast: “To the confusion of our enemies!”

1. In essence, a Martini is gin and vermouth. The less vermouth, the “drier" the Martini. Many Martini snobs aficionados take pride in drinking their martinis as dry as possible.

2. Conrad III, Barnaby. The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995), 32.

3. Pulitzer-Prize winning historian of the American West Bernard DeVoto complained that, “It does not matter in the least whether you shake a Martini or stir it. It does matter if splinters of ice get into the cocktail glass, and I suppose this small seed of fact is what grew into the absurdity that we must not ‘bruise the gin.’ The gin will take all that you are capable of giving it, and so will the vermouth… there are bar-strainers in the world and you need no ice-splinters in your Martinis.” (Conrad 1995, 32)

4. Harry Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson said he “liked drinking something transparent after all the murky transactions of statecraft,” and he insisted that his Martinis be shaken vigorously with plenty of ice, retorting to naysayers worried about bruised gin that, “I want to bruise the hell out of the gin!” (Conrad 1995, 71)

5. Make no mistake, shaken Martinis are strong stuff. Ice melt adds volume, but it does not decrease the total amount of booze in the drink. However, because the alcohol is delivered more slowly, it is less likely to overwhelm the senses.

I enjoy plying house guests with my own rendition of the “Vesper,” which has given some of my friends the worst hangovers of their lives. My recipe deviates from the original that Ian Fleming invented in Casino Royal, because I use more vermouth relative to the gin. It is not a dry martini. All modern day Vespers are an interpretation, though, because Fleming's original vermouth no longer exists. This is how I make my Vesper:

-         1.5 shots dry London gin

-         1.5 shots Cocchi Americano

-         1 shot vodka

-         Shake vigorously over three small ice cubes until the shaker is so cold it hurts your hands.

-         Garnish with a lemon twist.

To make a tightly curled lemon ribbon, cut a cross section from the center of your lemon. Use the tip of your sharp knife to cut out the flesh inside the rind and sever the circle, so that you have a long strip of lemon rind. Wrap the lemon rind around a chopstick and clench it tight in your fist until the warmth of your hand holds the shape, approximately half a minute. You may want to warn your guests that you have no intention of skewering them with the chopstick, because holding it in a clenched fist resembles a threat.

Martinis should always be served as cold as possible, so you should prepare this garnish before you mix your drink.

6. The “Montgomery" has a 15-to-1 ratio, which Hemmingway named after the British Field Marshall who would only lead troops into battle when his soldiers outnumbered the enemy 15-to-1. Hemmingway also took his Martinis at subzero temperatures — precisely 14 degrees below zero. (Conrad 1995, 38 & 48)

7. I learned these details about the drinking habits of Manhattan Project scientists from the biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Because I listened to the audiobook, I’m afraid I do not have page numbers easily accessible, but this Washington Post piece kindly shares the direct quotes.

8. “One administration official characterized U.S.-Soviet relations under FDR as the ‘four martinis and let's have an agreement' era.” (Conrad 1995, 11 & 67)

9. To my knowledge, Q never thought up this contraption for James Bond, alas.

10. Patricia Holt's The Bug in the Martini Olive (1991) I have yet to read this chronicle of Lipset’s life, but I came across this anecdote in multiple obituaries and The Martini. (Conrad 1995, 72)