They're Not Martinis

The most common complaint I hear about the offerings on the current cocktail scene concerns the epidemic of "Martinis" that aren't Martinis. For the purists, it's bad enough that a drink of vodka and vermouth is referred to as a Martini. But one doesn't have to be a stickler to bemoan the candy-colored cocktails with labels like "Raspberry Martini" or "Apple-tini" that fill out the "Martini List" at innumerable bars and restaurants. A drink of vodka, sweet liqueur and fruit juice is not a Martini.

Some linguists might contradict that assertion. It has, after all, become common usage to refer to any drink in a stemmed cocktail glass -- a "Martini glass" -- as a "Martini." And usage is usage. The compilers of dictionaries struggle endlessly with the descriptive/prescriptive question: Do they document the way language is actually used, or do they present language as it should be used? The prescriptivists are usually engaged in a fighting retreat -- even dear old Fowler's succumbs to new editions every now and then. Though the transformed meaning of "Martini" may be regrettable, it is an evolution no more dramatic than that which altered the word "cocktail" itself.
SAVOY HOTEL SPECIAL

[Drinks]
2 oz gin
½ oz dry vermouth
¼ oz Dubonnet (rouge)
Shake with ice and strain into a stemmed cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of orange peel.
INTERNATIONAL

2 oz gin
¼ oz dry vermouth
dash crème de cassis
Shake with ice and strain into a Martini glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon peel.

When the cocktail first turned up a little over 200 years ago, it wasn't a category of drink, but a specific quaff -- liquor, sugar, water and bitters. One could have a Brandy Cocktail, a Whiskey Cocktail, or another variation based on the spirit used, but that was the full extent of the word's elasticity.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that the term "cocktail" started to be used for a class of mixed drinks -- those with bitters. By the teens, just about any mixed drink served as a preprandial was considered a "cocktail," bitters or no. And by the time Prohibition was shown the door, a "cocktail" had come to mean any mixed drink at all. Now the word is applied, by metaphorical extension, to anything that is mixed. If the term "Martini" stretches as expansively as "cocktail" has already done, some day we will refer to treating difficult diseases with combinations of medicines called "drug martinis."

And what a shame that would be. Though hardly the purest of the purists, I am firmly of the belief that a Martini is a drink of dry gin and dry vermouth. No other drink has what songwriter Frank Loesser called the "slam, bang, tang" of the original. But beyond my unshakeable fidelity to the basic ingredients of the Martini, I must admit a tendency to apostasy. For example, I like to have an olive or three in the glass (two olives is bad form), which is anathema to the most orthodox, who insist a twist of lemon peel is the only acceptable Martini garnish. And even more heretically, every now and then I like to doctor Martinis with a smidgen of liqueur.

Let's remember that the classic dry Martini wasn't always so pure. It was common well into the 1930s to douse one's "Dry" with a dash or two of orange bitters. And perhaps the most common variant on the Martini was to mix it with absinthe. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Beautiful and Damned," this is just the sort of drink that the aristocratic Anthony Patch serves up to Geraldine, the theater usherette, when he invites her up to his apartment for some canoodling: "He wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant." A Martini with absinthe-substitute (the real stuff is not allowed in the U.S.) is still served in New Orleans, where it is known as an Obituary Cocktail.

Messing about with the essential Martini recipe, however, is not without risk. In his book "Martini, Straight Up," classics professor Lowell Edmunds champions what he calls the "communal" Martini. With a standardized recipe, the cocktail is a civilizing force: a secular "sacramental drink that unites in spirit even those who have never met." As such, the classic Martini "resists the pompous intrusion of personality," and Mr. Edmunds declares that efforts to individualize the drink "are doomed in advance."

The point is well taken, which is why I think we should make it clear that any cocktail that varies from the strict Martini paradigm is no Martini, but rather a drink of some other name altogether. Thus we can enjoy the occasional permutation on the Martini theme without contributing to the linguistic erosion of the Martini.

David Embury, in his opinionated 1948 classic "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks," decrees as acceptable "occasional interesting variations in your Martinis," but each variation he suggests comes with a name attached. Add a couple of dashes of orange curaçao to a Martini and you have a Flying Dutchman. If instead you add a touch of the herbal French liqueur Chartreuse, the drink is called a Nome. A dash of crème de cassis and you get an International. Embury is so serious about correct Martini nomenclature that he insists a Martini is not worthy of the name if it has not been stirred: "If you shake the Martini, it becomes a Bradford."

It is only natural that a popular cocktail will breed variations on the theme -- witness the proliferation of Pomegranate Margaritas and Mango Mojitos. When the dry gin Martini was at its peak, there were dozens of "special" cocktails anchored with gin and vermouth. One of my favorites is a house cocktail that was served at London's Savoy Hotel: Dry gin, dry vermouth and a little mellowing Dubonnet. The Savoy Hotel Special is a fine, sophisticated drink, and one that might appeal to those who like the idea of a Martini but who find gin and vermouth alone to be a bit demanding.

Just please don't call it a Martini.

By ERIC FELTEN
March 24, 2007

• Email me at eric.felten@wsj.com.