Shaken, Not Stirred

Last time, it was the wine cooler. Bartles & Jaymes style, we all sat around drinking gross-tasting watered-down drinks. But when that phase ended, the martini popped back on the scene.

At first, it seemed this was a fad you could be proud of--elegant glasses, serious booze, not much else. Still, a few months back, when I walked into Harry’s Velvet Room--a retro hipster joint in downtown Chicago--I began to suspect the folks behind this martini craze had soused our self-respect.

First thing through the door, the spook-movie-skinny maitre’d issued me a menu featuring three carpaccios, three entrees and 34 martinis listed on the back.

Dubious, I sleuthed the adjacent tables. On my left, a Geena Davis-lipped lovely drinking a Purple Infused Sake Martini (Stolichnaya vodka, sake and Chambord) and a broker in an Armani jacket powering down a Brave Bull (Herradura Anejo, Kahlua). On my right, a lawyer with a 25-year-old daughter and a 36-year-old wife consuming a Sophisticate (Ketel One vodka, splash of Glenlivet 18-Year Scotch) and one faux-traditionalist sucking down a Naked (Bombay Sapphire, straight up).

Finally, a man with the real McCoy emerged from the cigar lounge downstairs.

“I just sip ‘em, I don’t like them,” he said. “But I like to say the word ‘martini,’ and I like the glass. And, well”--he pulled a toothpick out of his drink--”I like to eat the olives.”

All this made me suspicious of our new 34-flavors love for martinis. I mean, given almost universal distaste for gin and vermouth, it’s not what you’d expect.

Thus, after slurping down a Mango Martini at another trendy spot, I decided to flush out the facts. What the hell, exactly, qualifies as a martini? And why, given the original’s patently yucky taste, do we want to drink them so bad?

After dialing up Beverage World (“Nope, no real clear idea why everyone’s drinking martinis.”), Bartender magazine (“You know how many people have called me this year because they’re writing martini books? Four.”), I logged on to the Shaken Not Stirred Web site and set my basic facts straight.

The martini, I there learned, was invented by German composer J.P. Schwartzendorf (1742-1816)--2 ounces Jenever Netherlands dry gin, 1 ounce dry white wine, a pinch of ground cinnamon on top. The glass, so popular myth goes, was molded from Marie Antoinette’s breast. Hemingway drank his martinis 15 parts gin to 1 of vermouth. Churchill and Hitchcock both felt satisfied if the shadow of the vermouth bottle merely passed over the shaker or glass.

“I’m a Darwinian,” Web master Jerry Brown explained. “The martini’s been evolving since it was first conceived. Do you know that book ‘The Five Rings,’ written by a samurai in the 1500s? It’s all about working from the act of moving a sword to just a gesture.” He paused. “The martini’s the Zen of cocktails. Everything extraneous stripped away. Besides, you can’t really drink them anyway. It’s all just a slow shift from cold to warm.”

Brown went on to suggest that the martini, at present, is a rebellious drink.

“Here we are, children of parents who went through the ‘60s; to act out, we have to turn to conservatism: martinis, steak, short hair.”

*

Still, I didn’t get to the bottom of the bottle, as it were, until I reached Carillon Importers of Teaneck, N.J., the franchise responsible for all Bombay and Stoli imbibed in the U.S.

Over the next 24 hours, three separate but equally friendly Carillon PR people called to coo about Carillon’s nationwide Martini Madness seminars; Carillon’s six new infused Stolis (vanilla, strawberry, raspberry, peach, coffee and cinnamon); and Carillon’s proficiency in designing martini menus.

Irene Meltzer of Carillon’s Newport Beach office named Hal’s Bar & Grill in Venice, Hamilton’s in Beverly Hills, Morton’s in West Hollywood and, of course, the Martini Lounge at Pinot Hollywood among the many Los Angeles nightspots pushing the frontiers of martini mixing.

Yet, just as I made ready to chalk this cocktail trend up as one more meaningless whirl in a long series of spin doctoring, Carillon’s president and CEO, Michel Roux, presented himself on the phone.

“Fashion is MAR-tin-ee,” Roux said in his extremely cute French accent, stressing the first syllable of the drink like a suave Inspector Clouseau. “Twenty years ago, people say, ‘I want one olive, two olives, three olives.’ Today, ‘I want with raspberry sauce and a piece of chocolate in it.’

“People reaffirm their personality with martini. Right now, they want to be perceived as hip enough to drink it. But they don’t have the courage. They have to slip some juice inside.”

With that, Roux hung up the phone and I started to cringe.

Fact is, the martini trend exposes that which, mercifully, wine coolers obscured. Then, we just fell for the ad men, slogan over jingle. Now, we’ve proven our need to cut the strong with sugar, to water the powerful down.