Transcript: How to feel confident in your martini, shaken or stirred

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘How to feel confident in your martini, shaken or stirred’

Harriet Fitch Little
This is Life & Art from FT Weekend. I’m Harriet Fitch Little. I’m the FT Magazine’s food and drink editor, in for Lilah Raptopoulos. I recently went out for dinner with Tim Hayward, the FT’s restaurant writer. The waitress arrived. Tim said, should we order martinis? And that was the moment I knew that this was going to be a fun evening, rather than the work meeting that it had the potential to be. If you drink, perhaps you’ve felt a version of this in London, New York, or many of the other cities around the world where martinis have become the drink of choice for people who want to signal that they’re sophisticated hedonists. And it’s such a simple drink. A dry martini is five parts Juno vodka, one part vermouth. So why is it the drink on everyone’s lips? And I do, of course, mean that literally. And why are we willing to part with upwards of £15 or $25 to drink something that you could make at home for a 10th of that price? My colleague Alice Lascelles has been trying to answer this question, and she’s got a whole book on martinis coming out next month. Alice, welcome. It is so nice to see a friendly face my first time hosting the podcast.

Alice Lascelles
It’s lovely to be here, Harriet.

Harriet Fitch Little
So let’s start with that evening that I had with Tim, who I believe you also know as a martini fan. You write in your book that a martini sets the tone for an evening. Clearly I agree, and I felt that on that evening. But what is that tone and why a martini?

Alice Lascelles
There’s something about when someone says “should we have a martini?” where you’re immediately in sort of cahoots together, almost. There’s this sense of anticipation. And as you say, you know, it’s gonna be a good evening, but there’s definitely a little bit of sort of mischief there as well.

Harriet Fitch Little
Yes.

Alice Lascelles
Which makes things exciting. It’s definitely not quite the same as saying, let’s have a glass of wine. (Laughter)

Harriet Fitch Little
It’s not. No. And I feel it’s not the same as saying, you know, let’s both choose some elaborate cocktails from the menu. There’s something about a martini, which is sort of a statement of intent.

Alice Lascelle
Yeah, absolutely.

Harriet Fitch Little
As I was saying in the introduction, it is such a simple drink, but it can be so expensive. We are talking about gin or vodka, a touch of vermouth, maybe an olive or a lemon twist. If you want to get that outlandish, you might, I don’t know, infuse the main spirit, but none of it is that complicated. And yet you wrote a piece for the FT not that long ago, about the dawn of the £25 martini in London. That’s about $32. What exactly are we paying for?

Alice Lascelles
Well, I think the martini’s popularity is a reflection of quite a lot of trends we’re seeing, particularly in luxury industries at the moment. It’s both this sort of iconic drink, but it’s one that you can personalise really easily. You can change your gin, your vermouth, you know, what garnish you have, the kind of glassware you use. And there are all these ways that you can personalise the drink and kind of express your personality and really make that iconic recipe your own. And yet, the surprising thing is, with quite a lot of these really expensive martinis is the actual ingredients that bars are using are not that expensive because there just aren’t that many really expensive gins around. What they’re really bringing to the table these bars is all the ritual that goes around it. So that amazing glassware, maybe having a trolley that comes to your table, you know, an elaborate way of assembling the drink, and that’s all part of the ritual and the ceremony and the fun of a martini.

Harriet Fitch Little
And you mentioned personalisation there and it reminds me of a lunch I had a few weeks ago with the food and drink editor of another newspaper, which I thought was a friendly affair until he engaged in what I can only describe as competitive martini ordering. So he wanted a martini and he wanted it in — honestly, Alice, there were sort of five specifications — so the shape of the glass, obviously the twist that he wanted, the type of gin he wanted used, the way he wanted it stirred. And then when the bartender arrived, he also bought his own twist to it because there was no orange in it. But he applied this spritz of orange essence at the table, so it sort of tumbled down over the glass and mainly over the table, actually, and coated the air. And the whole thing was quite a ridiculous performance. Do you think that a martini is something that people get quite weird about, and perhaps quite pretentious?

Alice Lascelles
Yeah, well, I was gonna say, I think you can get a bit heavy about the martini. I’m actually always interested when I go to bars to see how they do their signature martini. So I can make a martini how I want at home, but I’m interested to know what are they gonna do that’s a little bit different? Or how are they gonna express the personality of that bar through this familiar drink?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Harriet Fitch Little
OK, let’s get into the fundamentals of a martini. All the bits that go into it and that people get really precious about. I want to start with the glasses, because, Alice, my personal opinion is that a Y-shaped cocktail glass is the worst cocktail glass in history. It spills everywhere, and I’m convinced with very little evidence, no evidence in fact, that drinks served in these Y-shaped glasses just get warm really quickly. Are you with me on this, or are you a secret fan of the old-school Y-shaped glass? I did note that on the cover of your book, you do not choose to show the martini in one.

Alice Lascelles
That’s true. I think probably I do use curvaceous coupes more often when I’m at home. But my real objection with most martini glasses is that they are way too big. So you end up completely smashed and the liquid all sort of warm and dull-tasting before you’re halfway down the drink. So I think my number one piece of advice with martinis is go for a small glass and have lots of small icy martinis if you want, but definitely not one big tepid one.

Harriet Fitch Little
Let’s move on to that. I would love some more tips for this because during lockdown, like many people, I sort of set about trying new cocktails. The only sort of source of joy I could find was buying a new spirits bottle every week and seeing what I could do with it. And the martini is the one cocktail which I just totally failed at. I tried it at home a couple of times without sort of much research, it has to be said. But both times . . . How can I describe the way it tasted? It just tasted like alcoholism. That is the simplest. (Laughter) The simplest way to put it, this sort of semi-warm, you know, extremely strong and quite flavourless drink. And it just bore no resemblance to the drink I knew and loved and was sort of really missing at that point in time from bars around London. So if you are setting about making a martini at home, what are the main things to bear in mind?

Alice Lascelles
I think, kind of setting the scene for this drink, first of all, is really important because when a martini is ready, you have a very small window in which it is perfect, so you really need everything ready to go for that moment that the martini is mixed. So my first advice would be like, you know, put the dog out in the garden, turn off your phone, stick the children in front of a movie or whatever, and get the place how you want it so that you’re ready to enjoy that cocktail straight away. Next thing, put your glassware in the freezer because a frozen glass makes a huge difference. I actually keep my cocktail glasses in the door of my freezer at all times. And you want to use lots and lots of ice when you’re stirring or sometimes shaking a martini, because the more ice you use, the slower it will melt, which gives you more control over finding that perfect moment when you know there’s enough dilution that it’s kind of loosened up, the drink stays a bit so that it can breathe, but it’s not all sort of watery and horrible-tasting.

Harriet Fitch Little
And how much do the qualities of the ingredients matter? How much does it matter that I was using the gin I got in a sort of 2-litre bottle for a hen do a couple of years ago, thinking, you’re gonna say that it probably did matter.

Alice Lascelles
I’m a firm believer that cocktails don’t require really expensive ingredients, and in fact, sometimes really expensive ingredients can actually be problematic because they tend to want to be the star of the show rather than being team players, you know? So you want kind of good classic, unfancy ingredients. So I’m a big fan of the classic London Dry gin. So Tanqueray, Beefeater, and Plymouth as well. You really can’t go wrong with those gins. They’re made for the job.

And then also with, vermouth, I mean, Noilly Prat is the classic choice, but vermouths all have very different characters. Martini Extra Dry is great if you want a slightly more sort of clean, almost soapy in a nice way, kind of taste. Whereas Noilly Prat, because the wine is oak-aged a bit, you have a bit more full body. It’s kind of savoury, sort of honeyed taste to it. So, yeah, it’s fun just changing the vermouth. There’s loads of variations on the theme you can do just by changing those ingredients.

Harriet Fitch Little
And I get the impression that you’re probably a gin person rather than a vodka person, am I right?

Alice Lascelles
If it was my last martini on earth, it would be a gin martini. But I kind of feel like the vodka martini is actually making a bit of a comeback, kind of. In the trade often, it’s a kind of secret handshake. But when it comes to vodka, contrary to what a lot of people think, vodkas do taste different depending on what they’re distilled from and choosing one with the sort of right base ingredient, whether that’s wheat, rye, potatoes or whatever does actually make a difference to the flavour. So, and it’s worth exploring and comparing different types of vodka to see which one you like. I often think it’s a bit like choosing white paint, that you think they’re all the same until you actually try them alongside each other and then you realise, oh my God, they’re all totally different and you lose your mind just trying to choose the right one.

Harriet Fitch Little
This is a very apt metaphor, having just been through this process. I love nothing more than showing people the photo on my phone of the white paints and samples and saying, can you guess which one’s on the walls? Can you? And they never can. (Laughter)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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So talk me through — you’re at home, you’ve got the perfect time, you put the dog out, lined up all your ingredients — what are you doing to make the perfect classic martini?

Alice Lascelles
So, as we’ve already said, I’ve got my mixing glass and my glasses in the freezer.

Harriet Fitch Little
All ready to go.

Alice Lascelles
Yeah, so I would get my mixing glass out. I don’t actually freeze my gin or vodka. I like that at room temperature. Otherwise it could take ages to dilute the drink properly. And then double measure of gin, so 50ml into the mixing glass. And I like my martini 5-to-1, so then I would go 10ml of dry vermouth. Give it a stir for about 20 seconds or so, using a nice long bar spoon. I definitely recommend investing in a nice mixing glass and long bar spoon because it makes the whole process sort of more elegant and more enjoyable. And only then get your glass out of the freezer, and pour your martini into the glass, and then either a lemon twist or a green olive or maybe even both. I actually like . . . Yeah, I like both, which I know some people find incredibly shocking.

Harriet Fitch Little
No, that’s great. You’re opening up new horizons to me because when people ask me at bars, I always think maybe I’d like both, but I just sort of think as my experience, this editor at lunch the other day showed, you know, there’s so much ritual about it. And I thought I’d be considered terribly, you know, unknowing if I asked for the two of them in the same glass. So now I can say it’s got your blessing.

Alice Lascelles
Something else you can add that I like adding is a dash of orange bitters, something like Angostura orange bitters, because back in the early days of the martini, martinis were actually made with orange bitters, and that just adds an extra sort of dimension to the drink.

Harriet Fitch Little
OK, so now we’re getting into all the wonderful ways in which you can customise the martini beyond which spirits you choose and beyond the, you know, very basic components. There’s a recipe in your book for tomato leaf-infused martinis, which I’m particularly excited to try, as someone who grows tomatoes every year but often doesn’t manage to successfully get them to fruit, so the leaves is the thing that you’re left with. And they’ve just got that amazing smell, don’t they? Can you tell me about how that cocktail in particular works?

Alice Lascelles
So the wonderful thing about spirits is they’re very good at extracting flavour from other things. So you can put all kinds of herbs into gin and immediately create a kind of interesting infusion. So the tomato leaf martini is simply a case of picking a few tomato leaves that smell really, really good, tearing them off into your gin and leaving it to infuse for, let’s say, five minutes, and then just making your dry martini as usual. And then maybe garnish with a tomato if you’re lucky enough to actually have any.

Harriet Fitch Little
Now other martinis, they really can be quite out there. I have one at a Burmese restaurant recently, Lahpet Larder, which was vodka washed in pickled tea oil with plum bitters, and it tasted very nice, but it also tasted like a mince pie? And someone who sort of orders a martini because they like that savoury kick, I felt like I’d been a bit mis-sold. Do you think there should be limits to what bars should be describing as martinis, because the whole genre seems to have gone a bit wild?

Alice Lascelles
Yeah, well, of course the martini really went through a sort of period of corruption, particularly in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when you saw pretty much any cocktail served in Y-shaped glass christened a martini. So we got some great drinks from that era, the espresso martini, for example, the lychee martini, which maybe in its original incarnation was not that great, but you’re now seeing it being revived in lots of really great, delicious ways. But there were lots of abominations and sort of fake martinis created during that era, too. And I definitely think you can push it too far. I mean, a threshold I would consider is any kind of fruit juice or anything like that. But as long as it’s kind of strong and short and made with white spirits, I think you’re definitely talking about martini DNA there.

Harriet Fitch Little
Right. So it’s more about the spirit of the thing — I mean, the spirit metaphorically, not literally — than it is any particular ingredient, because an espresso martini is sort of in a way, that’s as corrupted as a fruit juice martini, isn’t it? But it’s still got that sort of heaviness to it. How do you know? How would you . . . Why does the espresso martini count?

Alice Lascelles
The kind of mood, that the espresso martini has the kind of naughtiness and danger that is quite martini-esque. Doesn’t it?

Harriet Fitch Little
Now, in a minute I want to quiz you about some drinks trends. But before I do, I’ve got to ask you the question I’ve been holding off asking because you’re just gonna roll your eyes and you’re gonna have to confront so many times while you’re doing promotion for this book, but what is shaking versus stirring a martini and does it make a difference?

Alice Lascelles
It definitely does make a difference. My position on this is that you do what you like, but the important thing is to know why you do it. When you’re shaking or stirring a martini with ice, you’re doing a number of different things. You’re adding dilution and you’re chilling the drink as well. So if you shake a martini, you are really crashing the ingredients around with ice. So you’re getting a lot more dilution and kind of energy driven into the drink. It’s definitely a nice martini, but can very quickly go watery, so you don’t want to shake for too long. That’s the important thing. A stirred martini tends to be more concentrated and silky, but it’s still got a little bit of dilution, of course. If you go to someone like Dukes, they don’t shake or stir your martini. They just pour frozen gin straight into the glass. So that’s got no dilution. So you’ve got a really heavy-hitting cocktail then. Of course, James Bond is famous for having his martini shaken, not stirred, and it’s thought that the reason Fleming gave him this sort of affectation was because he knew that it would be an unfashionable request, and he wanted to show James Bond as a kind of rebel with a sort of disregard for, you know, the conventions of the day.

Harriet Fitch Little
Again, it just makes me think how different the martini is to most cocktails, in that you can specify how you want it prepared. And there just aren’t many drinks where it would seem acceptable to say to a bartender, you know, I want you to mix it in exactly this way, are there? But with the martini, it’s almost expected of you.

Alice Lascelles
I think the martini, in the personalisation of the martini is, is really the ultimate expression of the cocktail-hour ritual, a ritual which was born during prohibition when, of course, cocktail drinking, which had previously always been done in saloons and gentlemen’s clubs, was sort of driven into the whole mess of necessity. And then you also had the Great Depression following on the heels of that, which meant a lot of well-to-do homes had to let go their staff. So you suddenly found hosts having to mix the drinks themselves for the first time? It moved from being a sort of backroom thing into, you know, a piece of entertainment, really. And that’s when people really got into the details of the martini, and it became a very personal drink.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Harriet Fitch Little
So clearly drinks can become fashionable in the same way, you know, food can become fashionable, a particular style of clothing can become fashionable. And as thinking back over the past, you know, five, 10 years that we’ve had Aperol Spritz, Negronis, spiked seltzers, and then there are other cocktails which just seem so totally dated, you know, when was the last time you had a Sex on the Beach or a Mai Tai? So why have we gone back to the martini in particular in such a big way? What’s making it so popular right now?

Alice Lascelles
I feel at the moment the martini is tapping into a slight feeling of sort of screw it. (Inaudible) There’s that prevailing, I think a lot of people are feeling a bit disillusioned with the world and wanting to just kind of party for the day and then, yeah, do something that feels a little bit dangerous and naughty as we were saying earlier on.

Harriet Fitch Little
So Alice, doing the job that I do as an editor, I often get pitched articles, as you might expect. I would now like to pitch you a drink. It’s a drink that exists. It is something that I love, which has never made it. And I want you to tell me if it has potential. Are you ready?

Alice Lascelles
I’m ready. I’m all ears, Harriet. (Laughter)

Harriet Fitch Little
The drink I love is the Lebanese doudou shots, which comes in a shot glass. It is vodka, lemon juice, Tabasco. And then an olive is put into the shot glass. And I used to live in Beirut, and this was sort of the staple drink of any night out. And I think about it often now, and I have never seen it anywhere else. And yet I think it’s got all the makings of a sexy drink. You know, it’s a bit exotic. It’s definitely not sweet. It bears a passing visual resemblance to the martini, but really, no one has heard of it outside of Beirut. Would you please give me your expert feedback?

Alice Lascelles
Do you know, you’re the second person this week who mentioned that drink to me. And I had never heard of it up until seven days ago, so I think you might be on to something. You know. (Laughter)

Harriet Fitch Little
That’s incredible.

Alice Lascelles
This can be the new viral recipe. It sounds a little bit like it could be a juice cleanse kind of a recipe, too. So . . . (Laughter)

Harriet Fitch Little
Interesting. It definitely doesn’t taste like a juice cleanse.

Alice Lascelles
And there’s something of the dare about it, isn’t there, as well?

Harriet Fitch Little
Yeah.

Alice Lascelles
You’re gonna have to make a round of those next time I see you. (Laughter)

Harriet Fitch Little
Alice, thank you so much for joining me.

Alice Lascelles
Thanks, Harriet. Lovely to be here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Harriet Fitch Little
Anyone who is interested in reading the world’s most discerning collection of martini recipes should look out for your book at the end of September, I think, beginning of October in the US. And there’s even one in there for espresso martinis. And if you’re in London, please join us at the FT Weekend Festival on September the 7th, where Alice will be doing a talk and a tasting on exactly this subject.

That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life & Art from FT Weekend. We’re leaving some relevant links in the show notes. We’ve also got a link to the survey we’ve been running that can win you some great headphones and a discount code for subscriptions to the FT. I’m Harriet Fitch Little, in for Lilah Raptopoulos, and here is our team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer. And our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.