The Bishop on the perfect dry martini
Much like Richard Nixon on the subject of hotel visits, the Bishop would be the lying if he said he didn’t like to take the edge off with a snifter of C2H6O every now and again. Yet your discerning diocesic was frankly taken aback during a recent morning’s drinking session, when a friend and fellow al-connoisseur suggested the Bishop’s idea of the ideal martini asciutto was a few swigs from a recently refrigerated bottle of gin. It now behooves the Bishop to set his mind at ease and the record straight.
The Bishop’s favourite olive-drop has its roots in the work of no lesser souse than Ernest Hemingway, whose famous tract The Old Man and the Sea is known, amongst the cognoscenti of cocktails, not to be a coming-of-age tale or a ditty on the perils of fishing, but an allegory on the aging author’s burgeoning capacity for drink. Old Papa, of course, liked to order a Montgomery—fifteen parts mother’s ruin, one part vermouth—supposedly the odds at which its namesake general preferred to enter battle; and, while the Bishop prefers to make love with his glass, not war, this combination, when handled correctly, gives the spirit of 1832 a fighting chance.
Purchase for yourself two bottles of London dry gin (the Bishop prefers Queen Vic’s own jewel of Bombay, though the juniper juice is such a fine drop that most any of the more popular brands will do) and one bottle of vermouth (it matters little which, though most keen drinkers should find Noilly Pratt inoffensive enough). Make sure you have as much gin in the second bottle as you do vermouth, for reasons which will soon become apparent.
Pour out the vermouth. If one is taken by the ‘waste not, want not’ philosophy, perhaps one could make use of it in any upcoming renovations projects as a substitute for paint thinner. Rinse the bottle with chilled, distilled water, then, when you are satisfied that minimal vermouth trace elements remain, replace the contents with those of your second bottle of gin. From here, it is simply a matter of mixing your martini in your own preferred style (the Bishop seeing virtue in both the shaken and stirred sides of the debate and having nothing conclusive to say on the matter), using the aforementioned ratio of 15:1—the greater proportion of said ratio, need the Bishop make more than is already patently clear, being added from the virgin of the two containers.
Add olive, lemon or lime to taste. Enjoy with fine conversation and a Cuban slim panatela.
The Bishop’s favourite olive-drop has its roots in the work of no lesser souse than Ernest Hemingway, whose famous tract The Old Man and the Sea is known, amongst the cognoscenti of cocktails, not to be a coming-of-age tale or a ditty on the perils of fishing, but an allegory on the aging author’s burgeoning capacity for drink. Old Papa, of course, liked to order a Montgomery—fifteen parts mother’s ruin, one part vermouth—supposedly the odds at which its namesake general preferred to enter battle; and, while the Bishop prefers to make love with his glass, not war, this combination, when handled correctly, gives the spirit of 1832 a fighting chance.
Purchase for yourself two bottles of London dry gin (the Bishop prefers Queen Vic’s own jewel of Bombay, though the juniper juice is such a fine drop that most any of the more popular brands will do) and one bottle of vermouth (it matters little which, though most keen drinkers should find Noilly Pratt inoffensive enough). Make sure you have as much gin in the second bottle as you do vermouth, for reasons which will soon become apparent.
Pour out the vermouth. If one is taken by the ‘waste not, want not’ philosophy, perhaps one could make use of it in any upcoming renovations projects as a substitute for paint thinner. Rinse the bottle with chilled, distilled water, then, when you are satisfied that minimal vermouth trace elements remain, replace the contents with those of your second bottle of gin. From here, it is simply a matter of mixing your martini in your own preferred style (the Bishop seeing virtue in both the shaken and stirred sides of the debate and having nothing conclusive to say on the matter), using the aforementioned ratio of 15:1—the greater proportion of said ratio, need the Bishop make more than is already patently clear, being added from the virgin of the two containers.
Add olive, lemon or lime to taste. Enjoy with fine conversation and a Cuban slim panatela.
posted by Salisbury at 12:25 pm
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