Time To Set Things Straight

I’ve been restraining myself. I’ve been biting my tongue and trying not to surrender to the powerful urge to speak out on one of the hot button issues of our day. I have anguished over this but steadfastly remained silent.

Until now.

I can no longer mutely stand by and let this happen. I have to speak out. Here goes . . .

THE MARTINI IS MADE WITH GIN (and vermouth)

Maybe it took walking into a popular watering hole and seeing this sign, happily displayed over the bar: “Today’s Special—Chocolate/Cinnamon Martini” to move me to confront this issue. It was certainly a defining moment; the world is broken and I have to fix it.
You probably think I’m an old fuddy-duddy, completely out of step with the modern world, someone who still has to get up from the sofa to adjust the rabbit ears on the TV. Well, you’re wrong. (I actually have color—1080p HD, actually—and a remote.)

I’m just as hip and happening as the next guy, but there are some things that should not be trifled with: Mom, apple pie, the Martini.
The story of the Martini’s invention differs depending on the part of the country in which you reside. If you’re from the East, then the story is that a creative bartender at New York’s old Knickerbocker Hotel, a guy named Martini di Arma di Taggia, dreamed up the combination (it was made of equal parts of gin and vermouth in those days). Allegedly, the first Martini was sipped by none other than John D. Rockefeller.
West Coast legend has famed San Francisco mixologist Jerry Thomas concocting the “Martinez” sometime in the 1860s for a customer who was headed for the town of the same name across the Bay. The cocktail was quite different from the New York Martini, but it was definitely made with gin.

The idea of using vodka instead of gin actually surfaced in the 1950s, but it remained dormant during the white-wine-and-Perrier Cultural Revolution of the ’60s and ’70s. It was when cocktails began to re-emerge in the 1980s that the “Vodkatini” started to take off. Now, please understand that I don’t object to combining vodka and vermouth (although I believe that it completely misses the point); I just object to calling such a concoction a “Martini.”

In fact, the prevailing heresy is to call anything served in a Martini glass a “Martini.” No matter what abomination some benighted mixologist comes up with, it’s a Martini. That’s just plain wrong. Call it a “Licorice Pig,” a “Festering Sore” or an “Anthony Dias” (please check with me first on that one), but don’t call it a “Martini.”

A Martini is gin and vermouth. End of story.