STIR & STRAIN

Stirred drinks are served without ice and consumed relatively quickly, before they get warm. Dilution and chilling here happens entirely outside the serving glass.

1 Chill your serving glass in the freezer at least 30 minutes. If possible, keep a few coupes and a couple of small rocks glasses for Sazeracs in a safe spot in the freezer at all times to avoid delays.

2 Gather all your required ingredients, tools, and prepared garnishes to minimize the amount of time from preparation to serving.

3 Add your drink ingredients to the mixing glass.

4 Add ice cubes to your mixing glass, filling it about three-quarters full. You’ll want ice stacked above the surface level of the liquid. Holding the barspoon like a pencil pointing straight down, stir smoothly for 20 to 30 seconds, minimizing the amount of agitation. The bowl of the spoon should ride the interior wall of the mixing glass while you stir clockwise with your index finger pushing down from noon to six, then your middle finger pushing up from six to noon. The goal is to create a silky texture, avoid making bubbles, and stir just enough to chill and dilute. You’ll see the liquid level rising in the mixing glass as ice melts into your drink, and the exterior of the mixing glass should feel cold to the back of your fingers.

5 Using a Julep or Hawthorne strainer, pour the drink into the chilled glass. Spoon out any stray ice chips that found their way in.

6 If called for, express citrus oil over the surface of the drink and garnish with the twist, or garnish as specified.

STIR & STRAIN

COUPE

The elegant five-and-a-half ounce coupe has made a welcome return as the standard for craft drinks served up, replacing the V-shaped, so-called “Martini” glasses of the ’90s that grew to ridiculous proportions, slopping their drinks over the side the whole time.

Libbey 3777

COUPE

NO ICE

This drink is served without ice in the glass; use ice if directed in the technique.

NO ICE

MARTINI

New York | 1870s – 1910s

2 dashes orange bitters
1 oz dry vermouth
2 oz London Dry or Plymouth gin
Express lemon oil over
Garnish: lemon twist or olives

Is there a cocktail more iconic than the Martini? It’s become visual shorthand for all beverage alcohol (warning label icons, emoji, public-intoxication street signs). Right place, right time, and right drink: The Martini captured the imagination of emerging sophisticates in big-city America. The Martini Company (later named Martini & Rossi) began importing their Italian sweet vermouth to the US around 1870, with the French dry style making its stateside debut around 1900. Even though more vermouth brands became available in the US over time (Cinzano, Noilly Prat, Dolin), the name “Martini” for this cocktail stuck. So that should give you a hint about the importance of vermouth to this drink…  and still, you get Churchill’s snarky comment about “glancing in the direction of” his vermouth on the shelf or the practice of simply wetting the ice with a splash of vermouth and then dumping it out before adding gin. As if vermouth was a nasty, offensive substance. As if! You may have friends who say they hate gin, or they hate vermouth…but I’ll gently suggest maybe they just haven’t tasted the right gin or the right vermouth, treated properly. The Yin to the Manhattan’s flavor-bomb Yang, the Martini is supple elegance in liquid form. For a time in the ’90s and ’00s, the name “Martini” came to denote any cocktail served in a cocktail glass: think Chocotini, Lychee Martini, Appletini, and so on. Thankfully, we’ve gotten away from that. The venerable Martini deserves a bit more respect.

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