This Is Not a Martini
A not-quite-Martini with Cocchi Americano, and a mezcal variation.
Let’s try something new. Tonight around 7 p.m. ET, I’m going to go live from my home bar with Substack’s video feature. You’ll need to download the Substack mobile app to watch.
I’ll make one of the drinks from this week’s newsletter, answer a few questions, and perhaps hang around for a few minutes, depending on how things go. It is possible that one or more large dogs will make an appearance, or an interruption.
I’ve never used Substack’s video tools before, so this will be an experiment. It might not work at all. But experiments are how you learn!
Links About Drinks
On the challenges of creating a pineapple liqueur.
Whisky award winners announced.
Sadly, I never made it to Leyenda, a New York bar renowned for its margaritas. Here’s a rundown of all the ingredients the bar used on its final night. 156 limes! When I have a big group over I usually juice about 30-40 in advance.
I did, however, finally make it to Press Club, a new bar in Washington, D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood that was one of the subjects of the Alex Demas article I linked last week. In so many ways, Press Club feels like it was made specifically for me: It’s a cozy, intimate, basement bar with a warm-but-not-overpowering vinyl sound system and nifty cocktails that balance approachability and adventurousness. (There’s an Old Fashioned with squash amaro!) The name nods to both the music-on-vinyl theme—the menus are printed on 7” record sleeves—and the neighborhood’s reputation as a hub for the Washington press corps. It’s a great bar for sipping drinks, listening to music, and trading media gossip with a friend. Also, the cocktails are A+.1 I’ll be back.
Yellow Polka Dot Martini?
There were two drinks that made me want to spend an entire month writing about Cocchi Americano.
The first was a simple, stirred, low-proof, sipper that’s structured like a reverse Rum Manhattan. The second is this week’s drink.
This week’s cocktail is not a Martini. But it’s kind of, sort of, almost a Martini—with a distinctive and perfectly balanced bittersweet edge.
I know that amongst cocktail drinkers, including some readers of this newsletter, Martinis remain divisive. Yes, there’s been a Martini revival in recent years. But for a certain type of mixed drink enthusiast, Martinis are too dry, too biting, too austere. Martinis, especially dry Martinis, lack the warmth and depth of whiskey, rum, or even tequila.
Cocktails, in this Martini-skeptical worldview, should be welcoming. Martinis sometimes seem to be intentionally off-putting; at the very least, they make you come to them rather than the other way around.
You can think of this week’s drink as a Not Martini. An un-Martini. It’s built primarily on gin and Cocchi Americano, and while it’s still somewhat irascible, the bittersweet intrigue of that aromatized, fortified wine goes a long way toward making this drink more inviting. Its core idea is to take Cocchi Americano’s bitterness and boost it, giving it a stronger bitter spine, making it work almost like an amaro.
That makes this a Martini for people who are skeptical of Martinis—and a gateway drink for those who want to learn to enjoy more classic versions of the cocktail.
I’ve already used this cocktail to convert a friend or two to the Martini Cult. Even if you can’t imagine yourself ever ordering an Embury-style 7:1 dry Martini, this is one you should try—especially since it’s incredibly easy and straightforward to make, calling for just three ingredients.
It’s a drink that shows the benefits of simple, clever, unfussy cocktail design, rooted in classic ideas and principles.
The Last Ward
Regular readers know I’m a huge fan of bartender Phil Ward. If I see his name attached to a drink, I’ll probably try it.
Ward made his name in the bartending world as a prophet of agave spirits, and mezcal in particular. His most famous, most beloved creation is the Oaxaca Old Fashioned, an Old Fashioned made from aged tequila and mezcal, and for many years he helmed New York’s Mayaheul, one of the first tequila-and-mezcal focused bars in the country.
But Ward has many other drinks to his name—including one that literally bears his name, The Final Ward, a rye-based Last Word riff that has become something of a cult drink amongst home bartenders.
If you peruse enough Ward recipes, though, you start to see a clear pattern emerge. His drinks tend to be quite simple, utilizing just relatively well-known, widely available ingredients—and rarely more than five ingredients total. Outside of juicing fresh citrus, they tend to require very little prep. There’s very little of the rotovapping, acid adjusting, high-science, homemade amaro, imported-obscurity-from-who-knows-where showiness that you see in so many high-end cocktails these days.2
Ward invents drinks that are designed to be replicable. They can be made with what’s on the shelf of most any reasonably well-stocked bar—or a well-curated home bar cart. They are incredibly clever, and they show off the relationships between familiar ingredients in surprising and delicious ways.
That’s what you’ll see in this week’s drink.