A Sidecar Named Desire by Greg Clarke

Author:Greg Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

E. B. White.

Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and no stranger to the martini, began drinking as a student at Barnard College. In an early 1940s diary entry, she wrote about the vital role that booze plays for an artist because it allows one to “see the truth, the simplicity, and the primitive emotions once more.”

When asked by an admirer about the source of his inspiration, T. S. Eliot replied, “Gin and drugs, dear lady, gin and drugs.” He would also proclaim, “There is nothing quite so stimulating as a dry martini cocktail.”

In The Letters of T. S. Eliot, he describes how he wrote the monologue to the verse drama Sweeney Agonistes: “I wrote it in three quarters of an hour after church time and before lunch one Sunday morning, with the assistance of half a bottle of Booth’s gin.”

THE CLASSIC DRY GIN MARTINI

As with most legacy cocktails, the martini’s origins are disputed. Some drink historians believe that the cocktail’s name comes from the Italian vermouth brand Martini & Rossi, which was first marketed in 1863. Others contend that it evolved from a cocktail called the Martinez, which was served at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco in the early 1860s and named for a nearby town. Another theory traces the martini back to the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City around 1912.

The “proper” ratio of gin to vermouth in a martini has changed over time as taste preferences have moved to the dryer end of the spectrum (less vermouth). In the 1930s the ratio was 3:1, in the 1940s it was 4:1. By the late twentieth century, it was not uncommon for a bartender to spray just a mist of vermouth into the glass with an atomizer.

Noël Coward, preferring his martinis extremely dry, once declared, “A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin, then waving it in the general direction of Italy (the producer of vermouth).”

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