Rich, sweet and unapologetically indulgent, it trades botanicals for cacao: clean vodka stirred with crème de cacao and strained ice-cold into a cocoa-rimmed glass, smooth and silky on the tongue. The vodka keeps the chocolate liqueur from turning cloying, while the cocoa dusting lends a faintly bitter, aromatic edge at the rim that an optional shower of grated chocolate only deepens.
Garnish: Cocoa Powder Dusting, Grated Chocolate
Stirred · Martini · Up
rinse
Rim a chilled martini glass with cocoa powder.
add
Add the vodka and crème de cacao to a mixing glass with ice.
stir
Stir until well chilled.
strain
Strain into the prepared cocoa-rimmed martini glass.
garnish
Garnish with grated chocolate if desired.
No inventor is on record for the Chocolatini, a thoroughly modern member of the "-tini" family that borrows the martini's name, glass and usual vodka base while owing it almost nothing in flavour. The tale most often repeated is Hollywood lore: Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson supposedly lacing their martinis with chocolate while filming "Giant" in Marfa, Texas, in 1955 — a story that even its tellers frame as legend. Whatever its start, it spread without a fixed recipe — bartenders reach for white or dark crème de cacao, and some fold in cream or Irish cream — and it has settled into its place as the after-dinner martini.