The Spirits #143: The Coronation Cocktail

The Spirits x Alice Lascelles Martini Special

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Picture by Urszula Soltys

~ THE CORONATION COCKTAIL ~

50ml gin
20ml French vermouth
5ml maraschino

First, place your glass in the freezer. Fill your mixing vessel - which you should also keep in the freezer by the way - two-thirds full with ice and add your ingredients. Stir with a barspoon for a good 30 seconds or so, be debonair about it. Strain into the frozen glass and garnish with a lemon zest twist.

Some Coronation notes:

1) The drink is by Brian Silva, the Bostonian bartender in charge of the bar above Rules in London (a good place to know about!) He created it for King Charles III ,would you believe. Brian makes it with Tanqueray or Sipsmith (i.e. classic juniper-forward gins), Cocchi Extra Dry Vermouth (a dry, rather herbal vermouth from Piemonte) and what else? Luxardo Maraschino.

2) As a note to the above note, I have the annoying, slightly affected habit of referring to dry vermouths as “French” and sweet red vermouths as “Italian”. Cocchi Extra Dry makes that convention seem a bit silly, seeing as it’s an Italian “French"“ vermouth. And come to think of it my go-to “Italian” vermouth is French. But I’m too deep into this convention to change it now.

3) Anyway: the drink is one of 60+ Martini variants in Alice Lascelles’s indispensible new book, The Martini: The Ultimated Guide to a Cocktail Icon. I smashed down a not-insignificant number of them at Alice’s launch party at Rules last week.

4) Alice says:

“The first time I tried mixing this at home, it reminded me of a cologne. It has a lovely fresh, rain-drenched garden quality to it. I like Cocchi Dry Vermouth in it as it has a herbaceous, crunchy character as opposed to the nutty-saline profile of Noilly Prat. But I think Martini Extra Dry would work very well too. I imagine that Brian would be an advocate of that too. He’s very old school and no-nonsense about brands which makes him a great antidote to the overly precious modern-day mixologist. And he’s not afraid of a glacé cherry either.

5) I actually made my tester w/ Umbrella gin and Dolin Blanc (French French vermouth). I enjoyed it a great deal.

More from Alice below the line. But first, music.

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🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🛒 Running low on booze? Visit the SPIRITS STORE.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here.
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.
🏥 And here is a list of trusted charities who are helping people in Gaza.
🍒 And here is my favourite poem about maraschino cherries.

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LET’S TALK ABOUT MARTINIS

I’m sure many readers will be familiar with Alice Lascelles’s work. She writes elegantly and perceptively on spirits and the finer things in life for the Financial Times; she is a regular on the BBC’s Kitchen Cabinet too; and she once supported the White Stripes in Vienna too. We also have her to think for the Fig Leaf Old Fashioned and for turning me on to the French Pearl too.

Picture by Urszula Soltys

She has now written a fascinating, useful and ravishing book about the Martini. An entire book? Yes. But there’s so much to say about the most iconic, coldest cocktail. So I thought it would be fun to chat Martinis with her and transcribe it here, sort of like a podcast but written down. The conversation has been edited for length, clarity and to make me sound much more clever and coherent than I actually am.

Hi Alice! That was a fun party you threw the other night. How many Martinis did you drink?

Hahahahaurrgh *deep intake of breath*! I have no idea. Obviously I mixed and tasted a lot of Martinis in the process of researching this book. But I think it’s a testament to the drink that it’s still my favourite drink after all that - and it’s still the thing I’ll mix most often on a Friday night. I keep discovering new variations on the theme too.

I drank quite a few and felt surprisingly OK the next day. But then I always think one of the many points in the Martini’s favour is that the hangovers aren’t nearly as bad as they are with certain other drinks we could name.

Hmm. I’m always wary of getting into that territory. But I do think you can get away with a little bit more with Martinis. It’s a more user-friendly cocktail, let’s say.

Can you remember your first Martini?

It’s the first one in the book actually. I had just started working as a journalist on a drinks trade magazine and I knew nothing about drinks or journalism. I happened to meet this hospitality consultant called Robbie Bargh who took it upon himself to educate me about drinks. He took me to the Dorchester and ordered me a Vesper and told me the story of how Ian Fleming invented it for Casino Royale and I just thought it was incredibly glamorous. And cold. And strong. I was completely mesmerised by the whole thing.

Do you find it hard to get past the Martini? I often find myself in fancy bars, studying a menu that the bartender has clearly spent years perfecting, only to say: ‘You know what? I’ll have a gin Martini please.’

Oh yes. That was pretty much the opening gambit for the book. But I do think that a Martini is a great cultural prism, a medium for different places and personalities to express themselves. So I’ll often order a classic Martini in a bar but ask if they have a particular way they like making it. You can usually learn a lot about a bar that way. What glass does it come in? Is it cold enough? Are they pedantic about what it’s made from or are they more interested in you? Actually one of my favourite Martini memories was at Milk & Honey in New York [RIP] many years ago with my now-husband and ordering a Martini. I remember asking what gins they had and they said: ‘We have Plymouth. That’s it’. I loved the fact they’d done their own edit. It really inspired confidence.

That’s classy. I think people can be intimidated ordering Martinis as it involves so many question . Gin or vodka? Which gin? How dry? Garnish? Etc. It sometimes feels like a test - or perhaps, for some people, like a trap. YOU TELL ME, BARTENDER!

Yeah. I’m personally a big fan of the classic gins. Beefeater, Tanqueray, Plymouth. I’d love people to know that there’s no shame in ordering a Martini with any of those and actually, it’s quite a discerning thing to do.

You write evocatively about Martini culture - the iconography, the design, the history. Do you have a favourite Martini scene in a book or a movie, say?

Hemingway writes really nicely about Martinis in the Garden of Eden. It’s about a threesome. They drink masses of Martinis. But one I enjoyed recently was in the Queens Gambit where they drink Gibsons on ice. I was like: ‘Woah!’ Now, I like a Martini on ice but it’s not very fashionable at the moment. But when I delved into that, I discovered that not only was the Gibson the really cool Martini to drink in the 1950s, there was also a big trend for Martinis on ice because that’s when the domestic ice maker was taking off in America. So those Gibsons are interesting cultural signifiers.

Does the perfect Martini exist?

I don’t really go in for prescribing perfection. My perfect Martini changes every day and sometimes over the course of a single evening. The fun lies in the tweaking and the variations. But I do believe there are some ground rules that will improve any Martini. Freeze the glass. Can’t emphasise that enough. Also freeze the mixing vessel. Use a glass that’s not too big. You don’t want a great tepid bucket of gin. If in doubt stick with the classic brands. And take some care with the garnish. You wan’t a good quality olive that doesn’t have some disgusting blue cheese in it.

Oh I love those Fragata ones with anchovies in them.

An anchovy. In a Martini?

In a Dirty Martini, sure!

I don’t know about that. No.

OK. Sorry.

Oh but the other crucial ingredient is time. You have to devote time to it and prepare things in the proper order. Deal with children, pets, all other distractions before you mix. Because once the Martini is ready, you’ve got to drink it. The music, the lighting, where you’re going to sit - you need to know all that as the window of Martini perfection is fleeting.

Tell me about a Martini you’ve particularly enjoyed recently

A few months back I was in New York and went to this newish bar called Tigre on the Lower East Side. It’s by the Maison Premiere people. It’s got this fun sleazy 70s vibe, mirrors on the ceiling, suede walls, banquettes, priapic flowers. They had a whole page dedicated to Martinis. You could order them by ratio which kind of solves the whole how do you like your Martini question. But they also had a signature Martini they called the Cigarette Martini which the waitress told me was like kissing someone who’s just smoked a cigarette. They made it with some polish Polish vodka and this very smoky mezcal-like spirit from Empirical. I kind of liked the naughtiness of that.

And then I head a very good Sauternes-laced Martini at Julie’s which is this revamped Rolling Stones haunt in Holland Park.

I don’t know about you but I’ve come to prefer the places that really nail the vibe rather than obsess over the drinks.

A million percent. One of my least favourite phrases in bars now is: ‘Can I show you our lab?’ I’m getting a lot more back to basics with the drinks and more interested in vibe. But I think a lot of people feel the same way. We don’t want to see your rotovap! No!

OK, give me three places that get their Martinis just right.

Three Sheets, London. Le Syndicat, Paris. Tigre, New York.

And give me one to make.

The Flame of Love. I really like Vodkatinis. There’s one in my book called the Flame of Love that was invented for Dean Martin at Chasuns in Hollywood. Frank Sinatra liked it so much he ordered one for everyone in the place. You rinse a glass in dry sherry, flame some orange twists around the inside, shake - yes shake - some vodka very briefly and then pour it in. Flame another orange twist. It’s really, really nice. I think people feel they need permission to like Vodka Martinis. It’s OK. You have permission.

The Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon (Quadrille) is out now.

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PLAYLIST

OK. This has nothing to do with Martinis. I’ve just been in a Bruce Springsteen slipstream this week as we’re doing Born to Run in my Album Club (concept outlined here… form your own, kids!). I felt the need to create a little ongoing playlist as I often do for my favourite artists. Truth is I’m not deeply acquainted with all the corners of the oeuvre and I’ve left off some of the huge ones here. But this should soundtrack any heroic autumnal drives you may need to make.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I interviewed the actor, author and general purveyor of outrageousness, Rupert Everett. (The cocktail bar we met at was 69 Colebrooke Row, btw! I had a Caper Leaf Martini; he had rum punch). I found him rather less ebullient and rather more regretful than I had anticipated. In fact we spent most of the interview talking about death. Interesting man. Wonderful writer too. (You Magazine).

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

I just finished the novella Sofia Petrovna by the Soviet writer Lydia Chukovskaya, an account of a widow whose beloved son, a Komsomol member no less, is abruptly imprisoned one day. Astonishing. I have read many accounts of Stalin’s terror but never one so close to it, so crystalline in its character studies. Petrovna wrote it in a secret notebook in 1939-40, describing events - and crucially, thought-processes - that must have been incredibly fresh in the mind. It wasn’t published until 1979. “I expressly meant to write a book about a society gone mad,” she wrote then. If you have an interest in Russia, I’d highly recommend.

OK, my general rule is keep it cocktail-y with these links but having nodded to the Gulag, here is Megan Nolan, one of the best writers of the heart, on the Pelicot case and the trouble with men. “How to tell them that the profound sadness and anger I feel in such moments is not about hating men at all, but rather because I love men so much? I love men…. Part of why I love men so much is just that I love people so much and that men are sometimes less allowed to be people, to be vulnerable and open, and I find this moving.” (New Statesman)

Poppy Sowerby on Labour’s dourness and - phrase of the week - “meal deal Britain” (Unherd)

The return of Ta-Nehisi Coates (New York Magazine)

Jia Tolentino on the visionary pop producer SOPHIE - no SOPHIE, no Brat Summer - and her posthumous album. (New Yorker)

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OTHER BOTTLES YOU MIGHT ENJOY

🐿️ Amaretto
🧡 Aperol
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🕊️ Bénédictine
❄️ Brancamenta
☕ Coffee Liqueur
🍌 Crème de Banane
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🫐 Crème de Cassis
🌷 Cynar
🌸Elderflower Liqueur
🏝️ Falernum
🦅 Fernet-Branca
🌿 Green Chartreuse
🐻 Kümmel
🍒 Maraschino
🌵 Mezcal
🦙 Pisco
🐂 Sherry
🌻 Suze

I also picked up a huge bottle of STREGA in Italian duty-free recently. You can expect something on that fairly soon, I expect!

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SHOPPING LIST: I’m going to stay with Martinis, actually. Call it Martini month? But this one’s a bit different. Light rum. Kümmel (Aquavit would work too - or some caraway seeds at a push). Coconut water is optional.

🥥