A Martini with vodka where the gin was, it drinks clean, cold and spirit-forward, the botanicals stripped away so the vodka's soft, neutral weight carries the glass. A whisper of dry vermouth lifts it from behind, and the finish turns briny with an olive or bright and fragrant with an expressed lemon twist.
Garnish: Olive, Lemon Peel
Stirred · Martini · Up
add
Add the vodka and dry vermouth to a mixing glass filled with ice.
stir
Stir well until thoroughly chilled and diluted.
strain
Strain into a chilled martini cocktail glass, served straight up.
garnish
Garnish with an olive, or express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
No single inventor stands behind the vodka martini, and its early record is a tangle of competing claims. A Smirnoff promotional brochure from 1935, David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks in 1948 and Ted Saucier's Bottoms Up in 1952 are each put forward as early appearances. Ian Fleming gave it a famous champion from the mid-1950s on in James Bond, who wanted his shaken rather than stirred. Its biggest surge came in the late 1980s, when a vodka boom led by Absolut carried it into the mainstream.