Am I Just Arrogant?
I’m no martini connoisseur, but these sorts of articles drive me nuts.
The author got it right that James Bond was drinking a vodka martini, the thing about the three-martini lunch, and the trend towards not drinking at corporate lunches. However, he totally got it wrong about shaken versus stirred vodka martinis.
It’s true: a shaken martini is colder than a stirred one, and I hope that Kaiser Penguin adds shaken drinks to the experiment to prove this empirically. However, the author got something wrong: the reason why shaken martinis get cloudy is because of the gin in them. Yes, true martinis use gin, not vodka. Common mistake. I highly doubt that a shaken vodka martini would end up cloudy. I’d go test this out myself but am far too lazy to get up and make a couple drinks.
April 16th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Here’s the truly big difference between a shaken and stirred martini; ice crystals. When you shake a martini, some of the ice in the shaker will shatter into fine crystals. These crystals will then create floating slushy layer on the drink. It makes it kind of gritty, not my preference. A martini should be smooth.
As far as the micro bubbles go, if you let the drink rest for about 30 seconds before serving, the majority of them float to the top and disappear.
April 16th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Yeah, that’s definitely true about the shaken martini, though if it’s properly strained it shouldn’t be too bad. However, I do prefer mine stirred to prevent worrying about that.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Anything shaken is going to be cloudy at first.
And I like the slushy layer on my martini, it fades quickly enough but makes those first few drinks icey cold, which I love for a vodka martini.
But it is why I like my gin martini’s stirred. Not because it will “bruise” the gin, but because the gin and water from the ice slush just make a flavor I’m not really in to.