Happy Friday!  Last month, One of my best friends and his girlfriend fucked off to London for seven weeks. I’ve been living vicariously through their Instagram pics, as well as pictures they’ve sent to me. One of which was sent a couple days ago. They had cocktails at a place called Dukes. According to my friend, that bar is where Ian Fleming came up with James Bond’s signature “shaken, not stirred line”.

Aside from making me want to go back to London, I remembered I had three martini styles from The American Bar at The Savoy hotel in London (of which, is another bar I want to go to next time I’m there) in my new martini cocktail book I used last week. Having the London itch, I felt the need to make all three styles for this space: Aptly named Dry, Medium, and Sweet:

Dry:

2 oz. London dry gin

1 oz. French dry vermouth

Strip of lemon peel or an olive for garnish

Combine the gin and vermouth in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass filled with ice. Shake or stir as desired. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with the lemon or olive. 

Nothing really on the nose. Maybe a hint of lemon from the peel, but not much

Flavor is classic dry martini. It’s cold, crisp and strong. It starts out with a muted gin flavor, but about halfway through the dry vermouth starts starts to become more prevalent, and that trend continues all the way to the finish. Of which seems to be an almost inverse profile to the start. The vermouth is the main star, with the juniper notes of the gin taking a backseat. The dry vermouth also continues post sip, leaving a little bit of a lingering aftertaste, which in my case, acted as a little bit of a pace setter. Too many sips in a row compounded the lingering vermouth palate and could be a bit too much for some.

Medium:

1.5 oz. London dry gin

.75 oz. French dry vermouth

.75 oz. Italian sweet vermouth

Strip of lemon peel or an olive for garnish

Combine the gin and both vermouths in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass filled with ice. Shake or stir as desired. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with the lemon or olive. 

There’s definitely more of an aroma here than on the dry variant. I think the sweet vermouth brings out more of the lemon, since I get much more of that here.

The flavor here is drastically different. The gin is still there, but nowhere near as prevalent. The sweet and dry vermouth play very well off of each other, and allows the lemon peel to impart more of its flavor into the drink. In fact, it tastes very similar to a vermouth spritz. The sweet vermouth does fade a little bit towards the end, so you still wind up with a bit of a dry vermouth aftertaste that lingers a bit on the palate. Overall, I think I might like this one better than the dry. It’s a bit more complex, and as mentioned before, it lets the garnish stand out a bit more. Mrs. Sharkbait also approves of this one, and says it is her favorite. She also says it tastes better with an olive. I’ll just take her word on that one…

Sweet:

2 oz. London dry gin

1 oz. Italian sweet vermouth

Strip of lemon peel or an olive for garnish

Combine the gin and vermouth in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass filled with ice. Shake or stir as desired. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with the lemon or olive. 

Very similar aroma to the medium. The lemon is the standout aroma once again. Surprisingly little to no gin comes through at all here either.

This is very, very similar to the aforementioned vermouth spritz. The vermouth, despite being on the lesser end of the spirit ratio, does a good job of standing up to the gin. Almost too good of a job to be honest. The gin is almost completely overshadowed here surprisingly. The signature sweet, fortified wine flavor covers a good amount of the herbal notes the gin brings to the table. Gin however cannot be completely contained, and it does shine in eventually underneath the sweet notes. Thinning it out on the palate and keeping it from being too much of a good thing. The finish is a mixture of the two spirits, but this time, the gin leaves a little behind. I noticed a lingering gin mouth feel when I finished, as opposed to the dry vermouth that hung around post drink in the other two.

Well there we go. Three distinctively different martini styles from a bar I hope to be visiting soon. Which one was my favorite? I think I have to agree with Mrs. Sharkbait and pick the Medium Martini. It’s well balanced and more complex than your usual martini. That said, I’d easily make any one of these if I was in a certain kind of mood and/or lacked certain ingredients.