Is this the Martini-lover's bible?

Hot on the heels of his book Negroni (OK, a bit over two years later) m’colleague David Smith has published his new work, Martini, again written in conjunction with Keli Rivers. As its name suggests, it is an exploration of variations of this classic cocktail.

In its purest sense a Martini is a mixture of gin and vermouth. The iconic Dry Martini uses dry white vermouth in a ratio that greatly favours the gin. (In the early to mid-20th century there seemed to be a cult of minimising the vermouth presence, by delivering it with a pipette, atomiser or even a “Martini stone”—a stone that was kept in a vessel of vermouth. One added the stone to the glass, trusting that what vermouth clung to it would be sufficient.) The traditional garnish is either an olive or a twist of lemon peel. A Perfect Martini uses a half-and-half mix of dry white and sweet red vermouth. You don’t encounter Sweet Martinis much, though the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) does have one that uses “Italian” (i.e. sweet red) vermouth, rather than bianco (sweet white) vermouth as you might expect.

There was as time in the 1990s and beyond when it was fashionable for any cocktail to be dubbed a “[Something] Martini”, even if its ingredients had nothing in common with those of a Martini, simply by virtue of serving it in a v-shaped “Martini glass”. To his credit, Mr Smith does tend to stick to recipes with some relation to the basic idea of a Martini, with a base spirit (usually gin or vodka, though occasionally straying into tequila or rum territory) augmented with a smaller amount of vermouth or something standing in for vermouth, such as sherry, amaro, liqueur, etc., and sometimes also small amounts of citrus juice and/or syrup. We do get a Dry Manhattan, which would seem to be a whole different ballpark, but whereas a Manhattan more often uses sweet red vermouth, here it uses dry white, so I guess it’s a sort of Martini/Manhattan hybrid. Perhaps inevitably we encounter the Espresso Martini (see my previous post) and the Porn Star Martini but, being vodka based, they are at least slightly related to a real Martini. (The Porn Star Martini features passion fruit purée and/or liqueur, lime juice and an element of vanilla, either from vanilla syrup, vanilla vodka or vanilla liqueur, such as Galliano.)

We encounter classics such as the Dirty Martini, which includes brine from the olive jar, or the Gibson, which is a Dry Martini garnished with a cocktail onion. (No mention of the Murphy, however, where the garnish is a radish. Though, as I discovered, there is a good reason for this—it adds nothing.) We get the related classic the Gimlet, gin and lime cordial, along with its modern version made with fresh lime juice and syrup. Another classic is the Pink Gin, just gin and Angostura bitters, sometimes with water, but here we instead get the Pink Gin Up, with added dry vermouth, so a cross between the Pink Gin and the Martini. We get the modern classic the Vesper, created by Ian Fleming for his 1953 James Bond novel Casino Royale, which blends gin and vodka and uses Kina Lillet instead of vermouth. (Kina Lillet hasn’t been made since the 1980s; Cocchi Americano is a useful alternative, though here David suggests a 50:50 mix of Lillet Blanc and China Martini.) 

An Improved Appletini, a 2:1 mix of gin and Calvados with a little curaçao

Red vermouth is also represented, in the form of the classic Gin and It, where the “It” is short for Italian (sweet red) vermouth, as well as the Martinez: here it is also gin and red vermouth, though using Old Tom gin (usually sweeter than London Dry) and splashes of maraschino and bitters. (It’s an old recipe, possibly even older than the Martini, and other recipes feature curaçao or both dry and red vermouths.)

We get two versions of the Cosmopolitan, the original 1930s recipe of gin, curaçao, lemon juice and raspberry syrup, and the 1980s reinvention of vodka, curaçao, lime juice and cranberry juice. We’re also treated to some modern twists, such as the Leggero Martini, essentially a Martini spliced with a G&T, or the GT Turbo, which is in a way the opposite—a GT concentrated into a Martini glass, using a “tonic syrup”. There have been commercially available tonic syrups, but David suggests making one by heating tonic water in a saucepan until reduced to a syrup.

We get the historical curiosity which is The Saint, inspired by an incident from the 1930s when the bar on the airship the Hindenburg ran out of gin, so Pauline Charteris, wife of the novelist Leslie Charteris, suggested using kirschwasser instead. And the book finishes with some seasonal ideas, such as a Halloween-appropriate version of tequila, sherry and blood orange, garnished with “fangs” of grapefruit peel, or, for New Year’s Eve, the Millionaire’s Martini, with a splash of Champagne.

Martini is a slim volume of just 64 pages, but it contains much useful, well-curated material, offering both a grounding in the essence of the Martini, as well some variations, from the traditional to the exotic (fancy a Breakfast Martini, made with a spoonful of marmalade?). There is no jokey filler here:* the recipes are actually things you might want to drink. In each case specific gins and vermouths are suggested, but the recipes are not dependent on having those to hand, and hints are offered as to what kind of flavour profile would make a suitable gin for that recipe.

Martini was published by Ryland Peters & Small on 9th May, priced at £8.99

* Even the Mr Blue Sky, which has blue curaçao for colour and is garnished by a “cloud” of white candy floss

Maverick spirits from Brewdog

I was intrigued to notice on the supermarket shelves two spirits made by Brewdog—Lone Wolf Gin and Seven Day Vodka. 

Brewdog, as their name suggests, are best known for brewing beer, and have established their brand mainly through controversy. They have repeatedly produced what they claim is the world’s strongest beer: Tactical Nuclear Penguin was an alleged 32% ABV and, when a German brewer trumped them with a 40% beer, Brewdog came back with the tastelessly named Sink the Bismarck at 41%, followed by The End of History at 55% (a record that has since been claimed by Snake Venom from fellow Scottish brewery Brewmeister, alleging an ABV of 67.5%). Brewdog are forever being censured by the UK’s Portman Group, a drinks industry self-regulation body, and are also litigious themselves, having threatened legal action against a pub called Lone Wolf and another called Draft Punk, which they considered an infringement of their Punk IPA brand.

The super-strength beer was achieved through freeze-distillation, chilling it to a temperature low enough for water to freeze but not alcohol, allowing the ice to be removed leaving a more alcoholic liquid behind, but Lone Wolf and Seven Day Vodka seem to have been distilled in the normal way. The distillery boasts a “triple bubble” still, with three bubble-shaped swellings in the neck rising out of it. A traditional pot still is not that efficient at separating out the elements in the fermented mash, producing a distillate that retains more of the flavour but usually means the process has to be performed two or three times. The triple bubble still, which seems to be a sort of pot/column still hybrid, can effectively perform these multiple distillations in one pass, with an emphasis on purity rather than retaining flavour from the mash. Head distiller Steven Kersley also says the design allows plenty of copper contact—copper is the material of choice for stills as certain undesirable elements in the vapour stick to it, drawing it out of the final distillate.

The distillery’s line-up of stills, with the triple bubble job on the left. Last year they moved operation to a new facility in Ellon, which (judging from photos) lacks the huge mural of a wolf.

Vodka brands tend to bang on about purity rather than flavour. Maybe they just decided that this is a better marketing ploy, since most people probably think vodka doesn’t taste of much anyway. In reality, if you sit down and taste several vodkas side by side you quickly realise how much variety there is, at least if you’re tasting neat. If you want purity you can, of course, just buy 96% pure neutral spirit and add water. In reality the various filtration processes that vodka is subjected to are more about imparting a desired flavour.

Seven Day Vodka is so called because they say it takes seven days to make, three of which are in the triple bubble still, starting from a wheat and barley base. It has a nose of vanilla and icing sugar, with a hint of red berries and cocoa nib. On the tongue it is smoothish, though with a bitter, slightly sharp top note—a tad sour with a ghost of vegetation—that overbalances the palate, with too little coming from the chocolately body.

Vodka cocktails tend to smother the taste of the vodka itself, though I find that a vodka Gimlet (vodka and lime cordial) can retain the character of a characterful vodka. Sadly this is not a very characterful vodka and I find myself repeatedly adding more vodka to the mix in the hope of striking a harmonious balance.

Interestingly, this is one of the few vodkas that benefits from being served from the freezer. Although it’s a hip way to drink vodka, all too often I find this just kills the flavour, and it’s disastrous for subtle and sophisticated products like Haku. Perhaps Seven Day Vodka just doesn’t have many subtleties to kill, but in all honesty it is highly approachable served this way, with an impression of gentle sweetness, the cocoa character coming to the fore and with a slight, odd, hint of ginger on the finish. This is certainly how I will deploy the rest of this bottle.

Lone Wolf Gin takes its name from the original name of the distillery, intended to be a battle-cry for turning your back on convention and doing things your own way, though (after a physical move) the place is now just the Brewdog Distillery. Unlike the vodka, this gin is not short on flavour, though perhaps again lacking in subtlety. Regular readers will know I like a gin that tastes of gin, and this one is certainly juniper-led, with a fierce resinous waft of it on the nose, joined by lemon and lime citrus, a warm caress of lavender and some earthy notes. On the palate the juniper continues to dominate, an evergreen pine thrust, accompanied by a lightly chocolate low-mid and a slightly bitter finish.

A Dry Martini is usually a good showcase for a gin’s nuances and its interplay with dry vermouth, but a Lone Wolf Martini is crude and frankly a bit silly, with that pine-resin character completely dominating. In a Negroni (gin, Campari and sweet red vermouth) it makes a bit more sense: this cocktail is a complex blend of powerful flavours with strong sweet and bitter elements, and the gin easily makes its presence felt. But that presence is a sinus-scouring resinous one, so that has to be something you want. Perhaps the best serve is a simple gin and tonic, where even quite a modest proportion of gin will be clearly detectable.

Brewdog don’t list all the botanicals on their website, but it turns out that in addition to Tuscan juniper they do use Scots pine as well, which explains a lot. Elsewhere online I’ve found references to grapefruit peel, pink peppercorns, Angelica and orris roots, Kaffir lime, mace, lemongrass and, indeed, some lavender. Going back to it I’d agree there is aromatic pink peppercorn on the nose.

A Brewdog Vesper

Given that I have both a gin and a vodka from the same distillery and—for want of a better word—the same philosophy, it makes sense to make a Vesper. This cocktail, described in the James Bond novel Casino Royale, requires three parts gin to one part vodka to half a part Kina Lillet, well shaken, and garnished with a large strip of lemon peel. (Kina Lillet hasn’t been made since the Eighties and Cocchi Americano seems to be the closest analogue.) On the face of it you’d think the proportions would render the vodka irrelevant, but I found with Roku gin and Haku vodka, from Suntory, something interesting happened. And here I can confirm the same: despite the high concentration of gin, this drink presents a subtler and softer offering than a Lone Wolf Martini, doubtless partly because the Cocchi is bitter-sweet, but I sense that that the vodka is also lending a sweetening, mellowing effect. Make no mistake, that pine juniper character is not to be denied, but if you have these products then this is a good way to deploy them.

As you can tell, I’m not vastly impressed by either of these spirits, but I should point out one thing they have in their favour: they are relatively cheap. The vodka is just £20 for a 70cl bottle and the gin £25 (though I think I bought mine marked down to £21). Both are 40% ABV. By comparison, most “craft” gin seems to be around £35–37. 

On the other hand, however, Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire and Sipsmith are all cheaper than Lone Wolf and I’d sooner drink those.

Brewdog also make three “flavoured” gins (I mean, it’s not as if the regular gin is short of flavour)—peach and passionfruit, cactus and lime and cloudy lemon—a navy strength Gunpowder Gin (featuring additional Szechuan and black peppercorns, bitter orange and star anise), plus three flavoured vodkas: raspberry and lime, passionfruit and vanilla, and rhubarb and lemon. I haven’t had the opportunity to taste any of these, but I tend to take a pretty dim view of this sort of thing.

Apples but not pears: the London Vermouth Company

I suppose no one should have been surprised that, hot on the heels of the recent gin boom, where half a dozen new gins seem to be released each week and every town or visitor attraction has its own brand, there should then be a vermouth boom. Well, maybe not a boom exactly, but certainly when I was a youth you basically had Martini and Cinzano, plus some dodgy supermarket clones. If you were a bit classy there was Noilly Prat and bar-trade insiders might favour Dolin. But now new brands are springing up all over the world, including Regal Rogue from Australia and my current favourite Belsazar from Germany. Often the USP will be the use of local wines as a base. 

The latest aromatised infusions to tickle my jaded palate come from much closer to home—London (specifically Queen’s Park, which is the other side of the city from my manor, Greenwich). A friend emailed with a mysterious request for my mailing address—he said a friend of his had something to send me. In due course three bottles arrived from the London Vermouth Company. 

Set up by Ben Leask, Andrew Wealls and Guy Abrahams, three friends with diverse backgrounds but a shared interest in food and drink, the LVC, as its name suggests, focuses on the local sourcing. Mind you, it’s a bit of a fudge, as not a lot is grown in London itself. But the S.E. Dry vermouth uses Bacchus wine from the South Downs, gooseberries from Essex and Bramley apples from Kent, so near London if not actually in it. (It does contain London honey, though, from Dulwich, not far from me.) The Amber Limon uses Kentish rhubarb, but I’m assuming the blood oranges are not from anywhere very nearby. And Camille’s Red uses dry wines from Kent and Surrey, but also ruby port. 

The Amber and the Red also feature largely unnamed botanicals (numbering 21 and 23 respectively), although the website does mention that Indian cardamom features in Amber Limon and S.E. Dry, orange flowers from Marrakesh in Amber Limon and Camille’s Red, and Indonesian cloves and black pepper in the red as well. But they were at least able to find local bay leaves, grown in Guy's back garden.

In each case the founders asked a specialist to concoct the recipe: the amber and red vermouths were crafted by drinks expert Camille Hobby Limon, of The Bar With No Name and Zetter Townhouse, while the S.E. Dry was created by chef Steven Edwards, winner of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2013. Neither had made a vermouth before, but the chaps behind LVC specifically wanted to see what happens when someone who is a genius in one field takes on a challenge in a different one.

S.E. Dry

Uncorking the bottle releases rather a complex and intriguing aroma—honeysuckle sweetness, nettles, elderflower, raspberries, meringue and candied fruit and angelica. All rather tantalising and exciting. But when you slosh some of the liquid into a glass the bouquet suddenly changes and becomes more overwhelming and actually less appealing, with a heavy layer of flowers that have “gone over”. There is still a bright orange/grapefruit citrus character, but now with the burdensome confectionary miasma of hard-boiled sweets, along with something pungently herbaceous.

On the palate there is a strong, sharp vegetable note of rhubarb, with roiling meadow flowers and stalks. It’s a bit cloying, though the balance is medium sweet overall. I try some Belsazar Dry alongside for comparative purposes. I always think of this as quite savoury, with almost a saline note, but I’m surprised to find it is actually no less sweet than the S.E. Dry; however the flavour is sharper, more about tart berries than mulching flowers.

I try the obvious and make a Dry Martini with it. This actually works better than I expected. It’s not much like Belsazar; it’s more floral and has an overriding aroma of elderflower and gooseberries floating above it. I don’t think it’s likely to become my new favourite vermouth but, especially when partnered with a stern, savoury gin, it can make for a soft, summery Martini that balances the hard juniper edges of the spirit.

Amber Limon

As mentioned, this stars rhubarb and blood orange, and is indeed amber in colour. Sniffing the open bottle yields a smell not dissimilar to the Dry but tighter, more citric, toasty and perfumed. Like hip marmalade. But once again, in the glass the aroma gets overwhelmed by heavy floral overtones, but this time I can’t help being reminded of synthetically-fragranced paper hand towels.

On the tongue there is a totally unexpected resinous spice like frankincense, along with floral and herbal weight. It’s a bit like wandering into a patchouli-doused head shop. There’s a bit of violet and strawberry in there too, citrus tartness and rhubarb bitterness, plus a lemon balm note that runs through both vermouths. But that patchouli note dominates. 

There aren’t really any classic amber vermouth recipes so I try making a Negroni using this one. For me this is dominated, as soon as you smell it, by a note that reminds me of creosote though Mrs H. gets mainly boiled sweets again. I eventually managed to balance it up a bit by adding more Campari and gin, but it really is a bit pointless using this vermouth in the first place.

I do a search for bianco vermouth cocktails and discover that Simon Difford thinks the El Presidente—Cuba’s Martini, made with rum and vermouth—it best made with bianco. A 2:1 blend of white rum and the Amber Limon certainly doesn’t clash, though it isn’t transformative either. You still have to like the vermouth’s cloying pungency. Another Difford suggestion is bianco vermouth with tequila, and this turns out to be more successful. The herbaceous prickle of the tequila locks horns with the heavy floral and resinous notes of the vermouth; with Olmeca Altos Plata I find that at 2:1 the vermouth is actually rather swamped and you need 1:1 proportions to get a good balance between the two. Difford’s recipe includes a bit of maraschino—thought I don’t think it needs sweetening—plus lavender bitters; I have none to try, but I can imagine the result would be a very complex cocktail, full of fleshy vegetable layers and late-summer floral tendrils.

One other thing Difford suggests is an Algonquin cocktail, which uses rye whiskey, vermouth and pineapple juice. I don’t have any of the latter, but a mix of rye-high Four Roses Small Batch bourbon and the Amber Limon is also very interesting, the spirit’s woody rasp more than a match for the vermouth.

Camille’s Red

In addition to the two English wines, ruby port and those spices, this apparently includes bonfire toffee—toffee made with black treacle (molasses). A sniff of the bottle offers a promising dark scent of orange and woody cinnamon, a bit of clove, plus that candied layer all these vermouths seem to have. In the glass it is less cloying than the other two; there is rhubarb, something floral, coffee, toffee and ruby port notes.

For my taste, the balance of sweet and bitter on the palate here is the most successful out of the three, with herbal, rooty and candied elements. Out of the three this is probably the only one I could drink neat—despite the dominating “potpourri” note that they all have—though in comparison Belsazar Red is tighter, leaner and certainly more bitter.

I try a Manhattan using this vermouth; it’s certainly distinctive, with strong wafts of citrus and rhubarb on the nose, but on the palate it lacks something in the middle. Oddly, it has a cough-mixture quality but seems kind of dry too. Adding a dash of maraschino helps, but again you’d be better off just using a different vermouth.

In a Negroni things start to look up. Straightaway the blend has what I can only described as an openness or transparency. I think the rhubarb and grapefruit elements sit comfortably with the citric bitterness of the Campari and the heady thrust of the juniper in a vivid harmony. There is also an intriguing perfumed aftertaste. The vermouth really comes into its own here, but you’d better be OK with bitterness. I tried it with several different gins and it is a solid winner.

The stated aim here, to make specifically London vermouths, is a bit hit and miss—not only do so many of the ingredients come from other countries, but the whole idea of vermouth has nothing to do with British food and drink traditions (other than our willingness to drink the stuff, though that applies to most boozes). But have they created something that tastes particularly Londonish? Rhubarb is a strong presence, which is fair play, though if you wanted a bittering agent then hops would also have been authentic for the region. And if the smell of over-mellow honeysuckle and elderflower makes you think of England then that is a thread that runs through these offerings. It’s a smell I get from gins sometimes and it usually makes my nose wrinkle and my lip curl, but to each his own. 

As I say, Camille’s Red makes a bright, open, vivid Negroni and the Dry makes a blossomy, summery Martini. The Amber is the most challenging for me, but initial experiments suggest it’s best matched with the powerful savoury flavours of tequila and American whiskey.

No.1 Amber Limon and No.3 S.E. Dry are £24 for 50 ml, and No.2 Camille’s Red £26 for 50 ml, all from the London Vermouth Company online shop 

The Hard Word cocktail

For some reason I always associate The Last Word cocktail with The Great Gatsby. In fact it doesn’t appear in the novel, though the characters do drink green Chartreuse,* which is a defining ingredient in the cocktail. The first published reference to it is actually in 1951, in Ted Saucier’s Bottoms Up!, but he states that it was first served 30 years earlier, in the Detroit Athletic Club. Later research in the club’s archives found the cocktail on a menu from 1916.

Traditionally it is equal parts gin, green Charteuse, lime juice and maraschino. For me this is too sweet and indeed Simon Difford actually prescribes three parts gin, but, as I discovered when trying out cocktails with Big Gin, it all depends on the gin—some are better than others at standing up to the pungent flavours of the Chartreuse.

Chartreuse itself is a herbal liqueur produced by Carthusian monks since 1737, allegedly to a recipe described in a manuscript given to them in 1605 by François Annibal d’Estrées, a nobleman originally in holy orders but who switched careers to become soldier (no one seems to know how he got his hands on it). Named after the Carthusians’ Grande Charteuse monastery, the liqueur is still produced at their distillery in nearby Voiron. It is made by macerating 130 herbs and flowers in alcohol and, like most of these things, was originally intended as a health-giving tonic. There is also a yellow version, which is sweeter, milder and less alcoholic, plus various aged versions and special editions. To this day the recipes are secret, known only by two monks who prepare the herbal mixtures.

Years ago—and I mean years ago—I for some reason bought a small bottle of their Élixir Végétal, a concentrated version of the same 130-plant extract. According to the Chartreuse website this concentrate is the original recipe, from which the various liqueurs were later derived once people started drinking the concoction for pleasure rather than as a medicine. It is sold at 69% ABV in 100ml bottles that come in an outer turned-wood case that reminds me of a Russian matryoshka doll. The elixir has a pronounced olive green colour.

Since I bought it the bottle has mostly sat at the back of a cupboard, but something recently got me thinking about it. Given its concentration, I wondered if one could use it in small quantities to add the distinctive herbal flavour but without the sweetness, and therefore the need to add lime or lemon juice for sourness to balance the sugar.

The purest form of this experiment seemed to be to make a Dry Martini and simply add a bit of the elixir. If a Last Word seems too complicated, too much of a punch-up between brassy sweet and sour flavours, may I present to you the Hard Word. The elixir does have sugar in it, but in these quantities it still leaves the cocktail a pretty dry beverage, yet with the distinctive pungent herbal flavour of Chartreuse.

Of course a purer form might be to dispense with the vermouth, or indeed to use vodka instead of gin, and I did try these: with just vodka and the elixir it’s easy to end up with something that’s like a not-very-sweet green Chartreuse liqueur, though if you get the balance right you can still taste some of the character of the vodka. With gin but no vermouth at least there is an interplay of the various botanicals, but I think the version below gives the greatest scope to combine flavours and adjust the strength and wetness of your drink by how much vermouth you use.

The Hard Word
2½ shots gin
½ shot dry vermouth
½ tsp Chartreuse Élixir Végétal
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass

This might not sound like very much Chartreuse, but I measured out 2.5ml using a measuring spoon and I didn’t feel it needed any more. You’ll see I haven’t deployed a garnish: I did try serving one of these with a lemon twist—and it completely ruined the drink. Later I tried one with a green olive garnish and the briny, savoury flavour went a bit better, but I’m not sure it actually improved the cocktail. There may be an appropriate garnish out there (perhaps a herb of some sort) but I don’t know what it is yet.

* Chapter 5: “Finally we came to Gatsby’s own apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall.” Now that I look, it doesn't actually specify green Chartreuse—and the yellow version had been around for almost 90 years by the time this scene takes place.

Northern light: Ungava Canadian gin

I was in ASDA yesterday, which is frankly not the most upmarket supermarket, and I was surprised by the range of gins they had on offer. My eye was caught by Ungava, not so much because of its lurid neon-yellow colour but because it comes from Canada. I was actually born in Canada, as my parents lived there for a few years, so I have a soft spot for all things connected with that country (though, as my wife points out, I am a fairly rubbish Canadian, never having been back there since I left at the age of three). So I decided to give Ungava a try.

The name comes from the vast wilderness region in the north-east of the country where six botanicals are foraged during the brief summer: Nordic juniper, wild rose hips, crowberry (looks a bit like a blueberry), cloudberry, Labrador tea, the white flowers and evergreen leaves of which are described as giving a herbal flavour to the gin, and Arctic blend, which is very similar to Labrador tea and its flowers, leaves and stems apparently contribute the “underlying botanical base” of the gin. It’s not clear if these are all the botanicals involved or whether some other conventional ones are included as well; if it’s just these six then the distillers have done an impressive job of covering all the bases of the basic gin flavour profile with the plants to hand.

The gin is bottled at 43.1% ABV and, although they don’t actually say, I have read elsewhere that the base spirit is made from corn. There is a conventional steeping and redistilling process as well as a post-distillation infusion, which accounts for the colour. (They don’t mention which of the botanicals is responsible for the colour; it looks suspiciously artificial to me, the colour of Galliano, but they insist that all the ingredients are 100% natural.) The colour is said to recall the aurora borealis, which can be seen in the region. The bottle itself is adorned with Inuit characters, which I assume spell out something relevant. (The word above the name does, according to Wikipedia, say “Ungava”.)

This colour is apparently natural

Uncork the bottle and stick your nose to the neck, and the first thing that hits you is, reassuring, juniper. There is also a prominent citrus note, plus something herbal and mentholly, like wintergreen, a dustiness and even something that reminds me of banana, which I suspect is a slightly over-mellow floral element. You can believe there is tea is there too. It’s a pretty appealing nose, with just a suggestion that it might become cloying.

On the palate the flavour carries on from the nose. It does not strike me as hugely smooth (other gins of the same ABV do manage a smoothness) and there is a slightly bitter aftertaste. It is subtly complex, but not very strongly flavoured compared to many, quickly fading to leave a stemmy, grassy finish and a ghost of Opal Fruit (Starburst to you younger people).

As you can see from the botanicals, there is quite an emphasis on berries, and the dominant character of Ungava is a fruitiness. Add a little water to ease the alcohol burn and a sweetness emerges on the tongue, giving the whole thing a candied tone to match the candy colour.

A Dry Martini made with Belsazar Dry (which is quite dark in itself)

I try making a Martini using Belsazar Dry, and the result is an approachable drink that brings out the fruitiness, making me think of an orange and lemon ice cream. With this in mind I make a Gimlet (gin and lime cordial) and, as you might imagine, the result is harmonious. But when I compare this to a Gimlet made with Gin Mare, a bottle of which happens to be nearby, the latter drink is frankly much more interesting: Gin Mare is pretty wild, but its powerful, pungent, rosemary-led blast certainly holds your attention.

A gin and tonic made with Ungava is the colour of Pinot Grigio and again shows an essentially ginny, but quite restrained, character. Citrus is to the fore, with a dusty herbal layer and a dry, slightly bitter aftertaste. Not unpleasant by any means, but a G&T made with Thomas Dakin gin with the same tonic (Fevertree) in the same proportions has much more punch: a lively but harmonious collection of essentially classic flavours that bursts on your tongue.

Maybe that is just distracting, with the botanical intensity of Gin Mare and Thomas Dakin giving them an unfair advantage in comparison; but as interesting as Ungava is on paper, it is fairly quiet in practice. You can play with the colour (I’ll have to try an Aviation, which logically should end up green), but that’s a bit of a gimmick and Ungava is quite restrained on the tongue.

Having said that, it did grow on me, and I suspect the best way to drink it might be simply on the rocks, puckering your brow over the delicate notes of tea on the nose that subtle grassy aftertaste.

Just nobody mention the deadly yellow snow…

EDIT:

I wasn't entirely right about the Aviation—more dark yellow than green…

An Aviation cocktail made with Ungava: yellow sky in the morning, aviator's warning…

The definitive "correct" Martini recipe?

A friend has drawn my attention to a curious volume, the American National Standard Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis, which you can view online here.

Evidently it was produced as a tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt to raise awareness of the American National Standard Institute and its work, but there are some interesting observations to make nevertheless.

Whoever wrote the pamphlet (or whatever committee) nails their colours to the mast—they like their Martini dry, with just 5% vermouth for lower-strength gins, and it must be served with an olive, pitted but not stuffed, or alternatively no garnish at all. Lemon peel and the Gibson’s cocktail onion are verboten.

There is a curious emphasis on colour, which must be as pale as possible. It’s true that Dry Martinis do tend to be pretty pale because they are mostly gin, but I’m guessing there is an unconscious sense that paler = purity and strength, especially in the macho world where you are supposed to strive for the driest Martinis possible. There is even a suggestion that vermouth manufacturers had responded by making their products paler, which is something I hadn’t thought about (but then I wasn’t drinking a lot of Martinis back when this pamphlet was released, so I don’t know if vermouths used to be more coloured). Certainly they do vary—Belsazar Dry, one of my favourites, is actually pretty dark (and probably gets darker if you allow it to oxidise after opening). Oddly, the text states that, “The colour shall be either water-white of faintly blue”. Blue? I’m assuming this is poetic license, derived from the idea that something can be so white that it is bluish, but I must say that if my Martini were blue I would send it back. (There are some gimmicky gins that are coloured blue but we don’t talk about them.)

And these drinks are big. I doubt that any official publication today would breezily announce that a “regular” Dry Martini should contain 3½ ounces of gin—over here in Europe that is 103.5 ml, which is over four units of alcohol. (For a long time the UK government’s maximum recommended intake for a man was 3–4 units a day, though the spoilsports later reduced this to 2–3, and I have a feeling they may recently have reduced it further.) If you fancy saving time and having a double you’ll be swallowing 2–2½ days’ worth of alcohol allowance in one drink. Drink responsibly, kids.

On the subject of olives, it is curious that the guide seems to suggest that maximum olive size for a large Martini is larger than for a regular, but for a double it goes back down to the same size as a regular. Perhaps the message here is that choosing a large Martini is an aesthetic decision, whereas choosing a double is simply a matter of alcoholic need. Or it may just be a typo.

It terms of mixing, no mention is made of shaking. A Martini must be stirred (and there are many who agree here) or blended from pre-chilled ingredients (what my colleague Mr Bridgman-Smith calls the “Diamond Method”). Interestingly they also mention the “radiation” method. This is presumably a reference to the old joke, attributed to Winston Churchill, about making a Dry Martini by simply allowing a shaft of sunlight to pass through a bottle of vermouth on to the gin. Curiously the sunbeam here is replaced by a 60-watt bulb. Either this is a self-consciously urban adjustment, or it is purely logical, based on the idea that if it is Martini time then it might well be the evening, so there is no sunlight. Or it could simply be a pseudo-scientific trope—by specifying the wattage of the bulb and the distance between all the objects you can control the precise amount of light.

The whole tone of the pamphlet reminds one of Jazz-Age wags like Robert Benchley, so it is surprising that this was actually published in 1974—surely well into the cocktail Dark Age, between the Golden Age and the New Golden Age, where we apparently are now. I’m sure that some Dry Martinis were still being consumed in the 1970s but they could hardly have felt like part of the zeitgeist. You can’t help wondering if what this shows us is simply how glacially the mechanisms of official bureaucracies actually work. Some bright spark at the Institute probably had the idea for this gag in 1928 but by the time it had passed through countless committees and sub-committees somehow 26 years had passed…

Of course right-thinking drinkers would probably bristle at the very idea that cocktail recipes should be standardised by any central agency—what scope does that leave for bar-room arguments, varying ingredients or indeed for personal taste? But in fact in 1937 the UK Bartenders Guild produced a volume for professionals entitled Approved Cocktails (later incorporated into the Café Royal Cocktail Book for consumers), which attempted to do precisely that. You can see it online here.