‘Dry Martini’

Roger Angell, writing for The New Yorker back in 2002, at the spry age of 81:

Preciousness almost engulfed us, back then. Tiffany’s produced a tiny silver oil can, meant to dispense vermouth. Serious debates were mounted about the cool, urban superiority of the Gibson — a Martini with an onion in it — or the classicism of the traditional olive. Travellers came home from London or Paris with funny stories about the ghastly Martinis they’d been given in the Garrick Club or at the Hotel Regina bar. And, in a stuffy little volume called “The Hour,” the historian and Harper’s columnist Bernard De Voto wrote, “You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest.”

Rest in peace, good sir.

★ Thursday, 26 May 2022