The Classic Martini, Settled: Gin, Vermouth, Ratio, Temperature

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The classic martini recipe is two and a half ounces of London dry gin, half an ounce of fresh dry vermouth, stirred over plenty of ice for thirty seconds, strained into a glass that has been in the freezer, and finished with a strip of lemon peel. That is a 5:1 ratio. It is drier than the drink was for its first fifty years and wetter than most bars have made it since 1960, and it is the proportion at which both ingredients can still be tasted. Everything below is the argument for each of those decisions, in the order they matter.

Gin, and why it must be gin

A martini made with vodka is a vodka martini, a different and lesser drink, because vodka contributes temperature and alcohol and nothing else. The martini’s whole point is the way juniper and the botanicals in gin sit against the herbs and wine in vermouth. Remove the gin and only the vermouth is doing any work.

London dry is the style. It is unsweetened, juniper-forward and bottled at a strength that survives dilution. Tanqueray at 47.3% ABV and Beefeater at 44% are the benchmarks and neither has been improved on for this purpose. Plymouth is softer and slightly earthier, and makes a rounder drink. Sipsmith and Fords are the modern London drys worth knowing; both are built for stirring. Gins that lead with cucumber, rose, grapefruit or anything from a marketing brief should be kept for tonic. A martini is the one drink where a 40% gin is a mistake: once a quarter of the glass is meltwater, it tastes thin.

Vermouth, fresh and cold

Most bad martinis are bad because of the vermouth, and the vermouth is bad because it has been open since the previous administration. Vermouth is aromatised, fortified wine at 16 to 18% alcohol. Once opened it oxidises like any wine, only more slowly. Keep it in the refrigerator, write the date on the label, and use it within a month. A bottle that smells of sherry and cardboard has turned, and it will make the drink taste the way the mid-century drinkers who waved the bottle over the glass were trying to avoid.

Dry vermouth, sometimes labelled extra dry, is what the recipe wants. Three bottles cover every need.

• Dolin Dry Vermouth de Chambery: The default. Pale, light, alpine herbs, low sugar. Disappears into the gin and makes it taste more like itself. Shop it at Wine.com
• Noilly Prat Original Dry: Fuller, more oxidative, a little salty from its outdoor ageing in Marseillan. The choice for a 3:1 or a 50/50, where the vermouth is meant to be noticed. Shop it at Wine.com
• Martini & Rossi Extra Dry: Perfectly serviceable, widely available, slightly sweeter than the French pair. The bottle to buy when the other two are not on the shelf.

The ratio, settled

When the martini first appears in bartenders’ manuals in the 1880s, it is a half-and-half of gin and sweet vermouth with a dash of bitters, close to a Martinez. By the 1900s dry vermouth had replaced sweet and the ratio was still around 2:1. The drink dried out through the twentieth century, to 4:1 in the 1930s, 8:1 and beyond by the 1950s, until the vermouth was a rumour and the martini was cold gin. That was never an improvement; it was a response to vermouth kept badly, and it produced a harsher drink.

With fresh vermouth, 5:1 is where the drink balances. The gin dominates, as it should, but the vermouth adds weight, a faint sweetness and the herbal top note that makes the lemon twist make sense. Move to 3:1 for a softer, more aromatic drink with Noilly Prat, and to 50/50 when the vermouth is excellent and the hour is early. Below 8:1 the vermouth stops contributing and you are drinking chilled, diluted gin, which is fine, but is not a martini. A single dash of orange bitters is historically correct and still worth adding; it bridges the gin and vermouth without announcing itself.

Temperature and dilution, which are the same subject

A martini is served without ice, so all of its cold and all of its water come from the thirty seconds it spends in the mixing glass. Stirred with plenty of large, dry ice cubes, the drink reaches roughly 25°F while picking up about a fifth of its volume in water. That dilution is not a flaw; it is what takes the gin from 47% to something nearer 30% and lets the botanicals open. Stir less and the drink is hot and hard. Stir for a minute and it is watery. Thirty seconds, counted, is the number.

Shaking achieves the same temperature faster but adds air and ice shards, so the drink arrives cloudy with a thin head of foam that dies in the glass. The clarity of a stirred martini is part of the drink. Shake a daiquiri; stir a martini.

The glass matters as much as the mixing. A room-temperature coupe will raise the drink by several degrees before the first sip. Keep two in the freezer permanently. A Nick and Nora or a small coupe holds the right amount, three to four ounces, so that the last sip is still cold. The oversized V-shaped glass of the 1990s holds a double, which is why those martinis were warm by the end and why nobody could finish one gracefully.

The classic martini recipe, start to finish

• Fill a mixing glass two-thirds with ice from a tray, not the dispenser; the cubes should be dry and unclouded.
• Add 2½ oz London dry gin, ½ oz dry vermouth and, if using, one dash of orange bitters.
• Stir with a bar spoon for thirty seconds, keeping the spoon against the glass so the ice turns rather than churns.
• Strain into a coupe or Nick and Nora taken straight from the freezer.
• Cut a strip of lemon peel, hold it skin-side down over the glass, pinch it so the oil sprays across the surface, wipe the rim with it, and drop it in.

Olives are permitted; a twist is better, because lemon oil belongs with juniper. If you want the olive, use a good one from a jar of brine rather than one stuffed with pimento, and never add the brine unless you have decided to make a dirty martini, which is a separate decision and a separate drink. A pickled onion makes it a Gibson. Half the vermouth replaced with dry sherry makes it a Tuxedo, and worth trying once the classic is second nature.

For a party, the proportions scale without change: a bottle of gin and five ounces of vermouth, stirred in batches of four or pre-diluted with six ounces of water per bottle and kept in the freezer, where it will not freeze. Pour from the bottle into frozen glasses and twist a peel over each. It is the only cocktail that improves when nobody is standing at the bar making it.