Strong Drinks For Summer
CRUSHABLE
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WLTM
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CRUSHABLE ℽ WLTM ⩷
About this time last year the word ‘crushable’ was becoming annoyingly eponymous with drinking. Take a strong, booze forward favourite and either cut it with more lower-in-abv modifier, serve over ice, or ‘spritz’ it. Punch Drink ran a great piece on the folly of the latter - not everything can be spritzed; you need a bitter element not a marketing degree to pass an Italian.
We sit largely in accordance with one and two. Our bar is hot in the summer. The humidity, music and drinks can create a wonderfully heady, febrile atmosphere; matching drinks to their environment works and created THIS quaffable house classic.
However - this summer we’ve noticed a buck to the trend with people really piling on the strong, booze forward classics. It’s fair to say the mercury hasn’t exactly peaked this season, but with everything else that’s going on in the world the wanderlust for a good martini is hard to ignore.
With that in mind we thought we’d proffer up some handy tips to this classic serve to help you do Martini Summer ‘22 right!
Essentially this is a two ingredient drink so ingredients matter.
Pick a good vermouth. Back in the days of Ian Fleming, adding more than a drip of vermouth to a martini was seen as some sort of sacrilege. That’s firstly because the vermouth was probably made with awful wine and secondly because, well, toxic masculinity. Find a nice vermouth you like to drink on it’s own with good provenance and use it.
Likewise, use a nice gin or vodka (or mezcal, more on that anon). As it is summer I’d be looking at gins with cucumber and tannic elements. With vodkas, the smoother the better.
The blend: with gin we go 2:1. Many people who live and die by Duke’s will choke on their fat gordal olive to this. But hark back to point 2 - we really like our vermouth, it’s called Dry Vermouth meaning the profile is still dry. With a Vodka Martini we go 1 3/4:1 1/4. There’s less flavour so more headroom for the vermouth to profile.
Mixing: don’t stir on wet ice. By that I mean ice that’s already half melted. You want dry looking ice straight from the freezer. This will give you more time and control to get down to the optimal temperature and dilution. To do this you can only really stir away and taste as you go. But once we get there you will know. The drop in temp should feel electric on the tongue while the harsher notes of the gin or vodka sit in perfect balance with the added water.
Garnish with something sharp or briney - again this to us informs the choice of gin or vodka. Lemon zest for dry and aromatic, olive or anything pickled in brine for a rounder, saline wash.
What we use:
The vermouth is Regal Rogue Daring Dry - an Aussie number with a savoury tang (great in 2:1 martinis)
For a dirty gin martini you can’t go wrong with Plymouth, which has an oily complexion. For a dry martini Martin Miller’s is super clean and holds up all the botanicals.
For vodka we like something lightly flavoured for dirty like the Babicka Wormwood, and super clean for dry such as Reyka (same water supply as Martin Miller’s wouldn’t you know). A dash of fino sherry goes a long way way in a dry vodka martini in place of a 1/4 part of the vermouth.
Mezcal! Mezcal is a great gin alternative in a number of drinks as it profiles similarly. We find it doesn’t go so great with a dry vermouth but utilise the vodka martini ratio (1 3/4:1 1/4) with a rosé vermouth and you won't be disappointed. The El Bandarra works great with an affordable mezcal like Amores Verde Momento. Garnish with orange zest and a few drops of saline solution or a sprig of rosemary.