![]() The bitters were beginning to fall off the Martini, and I guess the Gibson had to distinguish itself somehow. A survey of cocktail books from the ‘30s and ‘40s show that half of them have an onion’d Gibson and the other half don’t. Even more annoying: As to precisely when and how it got a pickled onion, no one has any idea. So why a Gibson back then? It used to be that a Martini had orange bitters, and a Gibson didn’t. When the Gibson shows up in print in 1908, in “Cocktail” William Boothby’s, The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them, it’s just gin and vermouth. ![]() ![]() And one of the really annoying things about the Gibson is that it’s also not true. The onion is the Gibson’s defining characteristic, why it exists, and the sole reason that bars across the world stock cocktail onions. Technically, a Gibson is just a Martini garnished with a small, pickled onion instead of the standard olive. How to Make a Sidecar, the Classic Cognac Cocktail That's Stronger Than Your Average Sour This 40-Year-Old Delivers a More Nuanced Sherry-Cask Single Malt. So if and when I can, I prefer that.Buffalo Trace’s Beloved Weller Line Just Got a New Bourbon I topped it with olives and that became my signature drink.īut once I learned what a Gibson martini was, I fell in love with pickled onions. It took a while, playing with the ratio of gin to vermouth, but I finally landed around a 6:1 recipe plus a dash of brine. So I added some of the olive juice in, shook it up, and…it tasted better. Being naive and not knowing much about alcohol, I figured it would be the same thing, right? I took a martini shaker, filled it with ice, poured in some gin and…all we had was sweet vermouth. At the time, I didn’t even know vodka could be used and even now rarely ever drink vodka anyway. We always had/have gin on hand because my father’s go-to drink is a Tanqueray & tonic. I was still living with my parents, so I was bound by the contents of their liquor cabinet. Knowing there were only 2 ingredients plus garnishes I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make (I’d watched enough James Bond). I was a young 20-something and had never made a martini, but they always sounded so sexy and mature. Sometime around the turn of the century, the sweet vermouth was replaced with dry vermouth and that’s what we’ve come to know now as a “classic martini.” The Sweet and Dirty Martini *According to Food & Wine, the martini originated in the United States in the mid-19th century, and originally made with sweet vermouth. It’s also not clear like its dry French cousin. Sweet vermouth is a fortified Italian wine and used in other classic cocktails like Manhattans. Take the dirty martini ingredients, and switch out the dry vermouth for sweet vermouth, and now you’re speaking my language. To make a martini “dirty’ is to add a little brine juice (from the olives or pickled onions), which both brings down the pure alcohol ratio and can impart a bit of color. The classic martini is pure clear alcohol. A Gibson martini is served with pickled cocktail onions. The drink itself is served in the iconic Y-shaped glass and can be garnished with a variety of things, very often olives or a simple lemon twist. 6 parts gin/vodka to 1 part vermouth is a good starting point, but more gin/vodka and less vermouth = extra dry. Martinis are made with a base clear liquor (vodka or gin, take your pick-I prefer gin) and some amount of dry vermouth, depending on how dry you like your drink. They can be made dry, or dirty, or with all kinds of additives like pomegranate syrup-or none at all. The variations are as numerous as there are James Bond movies. A martini is a perfect cocktail because it can be precisely what you want it to be. While it may be true that the classic martini is made that way, that doesn’t mean you’re limited by rules. But if that were true, then appletinis and chocolate martinis wouldn’t exist.Īnd don’t let anyone tell you those aren’t delicious! Purists (aka, the cocktail police) will tell you that a true martini is only made with dry vermouth and gin/vodka. ![]()
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