Currently, "martini" is to cocktail as "multimedia" was to computer in the early 90s. I'm waiting for this fad to die.
In Marie Antoinette's time, champagne was drunk out of wide, shallow glasses that were said to be the size of one of her breasts. The delicate scents of the sparkling wine drifted away from these glasses, never to be smelled by the amorous Frenchmen of the 1700s. These days we use tall, narrow glasses to concentrate the aromas: champagne flutes. They work!
Right now I'm drinking a Manhattan out of an "up glass" or martini glass, the cone-shaped thing that girly drinks have been delivered in for the last decade. This glass sucks. Martini glasses are hard to carry and hold, easy to spill, and they don't stay cold.
Martini glasses are for gin or vodka and vermouth, anyway. Why put chocolate syrup in the damn thing? Other ingredients belong in rocks glasses (the short, heavy-bottomed ones) or in Collins glasses (the tall narrow juice glasses). What do you really need to drink out of a plugged funnel? Motor oil?
Put a short, wide glass in the freezer and leave it there until the next time you want a mixed drink. You won't need ice, and your drink will benefit. So many recipes depend on the details of execution: if the glass just came out of the hot dishwasher, too much ice will melt and the result will be watery. To hell with drinking out of cones anyway. And that's my Martin Amis moment for the day.
Martini glasses are for show. Real drinkers want their booze in their fist where they can keep a grip on it.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe I posted something so lucid after two Sazeracs and a Manhattan.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to your post on the upcoming election fueled by three Sazeracs and that Manhattan. It will take that much alcohol to make the whole thing worth your time.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe you're able to write at 10:00 am after all that alcohol.
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