Martini: Calling Gary Gillman, et al...

[TNbourbon]

So, I guess the martini's pretty popular then, huh?
Really, I didn't 'troll' this thread -- just start it in order to watch everyone else take part! But, I've not experimented enough to come to any final conclusions about my martini explorations (though I'm nonetheless gratified to see the interest others have taken in the subject, too).
So far, I can state these general sentiments:

• I like martinis
• I'll stick with the cherries over olives, or garnish with nothing at all
• my favorite combo so far has been (happily, inexpensive) Seagram's lime gin with Martini & Rossi dry vermouth, about 3.5:1 (but, I haven't tried the lime with Noilly Prat or other vermouth yet, so that's subject to immediate change upon, well, change...). The lime, of course, leads me to think I'll eventually experiment with lime garnish -- but the lime gin is a good 'cheat'
• I'm on the lookout for Lillet (enjoyed the Fleming/Bond discussions); I'm pretty sure I've seen it somewhere around, but exactly where may be months in discovery

Please keep the ideas rolling...

[squire]

Any prize worth pursuing Tim is, well, worth pursuing.

[TNbourbon]

As for the much-welcomed literary bent this thread has undertaken, I'll add a couple of apropos examples I've run across recently:

From Ogden Nash, whom I admire for demonstrating humor need not be complex to be entertaining:

"There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin."

And the inimitable Dorothy Parker:

"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under the host."

EDIT: Ah, I see that the Nash verse is part of Roger Angell's essay, which I just now got around to reading. See, great minds, and all that rot...
By the way, my most frequent association with Angell's writing was through our shared birthright of baseball, about which he wrote some of the best prose of the late 20th Century.

[squire]

Tim both of those are in the book Martini which I pulled out for some bedtime reading when you started this thread.

[Gillman]

And so the Martini personified might have crooned, "They call me mellow yellow". Was Donovan an admirer of Ogden Nash? If so this would be an inversion of the usual rock and roll disdain for established drinks or anything. Pete Townshend wrote, "Sub-sti-tute my Coke for gin", meaning the soft drink not the drug although I think the lyric was later misunderstood by some.

Why was Nash's Martini yellow though? Because a lot of gin was, at the time. Seagram's was the exemplar. I think that type is still available, it was until about 20 years ago, then Seagram substituted (sorry) a white gin, but I think later it brought the mellow yellow back. (It was yeller from a bit of barrel aging).

Gary

[ratcheer]

I haven't had any in two or three years, but I thought Seagram's gin was still yellow.

Tim

[Gillman]

I think it is, but as I recall, there was a time when it wasn't.

Gary

[craigthom]

And I think it's made and aged at LDI, isn't it?

We just can't get enough LDI these days.

Edit: it says Lawrenceburg in this picture, but it's also clear, not yellow.

[Gillman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eswQl-hcvU0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLFGn...feature=fvwrel

For Tim S.

Gary

[Gillman]

http://www.slashfood.com/2008/02/27/...s-reserve-gin/

This account of a Distiller's Reserve version refers to a pale yellow color; maybe only this iteration has it, today.

Gary