Drink
There is only one martini and it is made by Gilberto Preti at Duke's Hotel in St James's Place, London. That is all you need to know. Forget onerous debates about quantity of vermouth against hard spirits, shaken v stirred, olive v twist and vodka v gin, and especially forget Winston Churchill glancing across the room at the vermouth bottle. What did he know?
James Bond, who drank some ghastly hybrid ("Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet . . . this drink's my own invention") shaken and not stirred, was a heathen. Martini, the 20th-century icon, may be an American invention but the person who makes the best martini in the world is an Italian.
"It is good for you. It is very clean and easy to digest because there is no sugar in it," insists Gilberto as I perch on a bar stool in the calm, dignified cocktail lounge at Duke's and surrender the woes of my day to the tender, professional flourish of his martini glass. Gilberto is a master. The bar is filled with devotees to his drink. There is scarcely a corner of the globe in which you can mention Duke's Hotel without being advised to try Gilberto's martini.
I sigh with pleasure as the ritual begins. Gilberto whisks a thin martini glass out of the freezer and presents me with four ice-encrusted bottles of gin. "Which would you like?" he asks. "Bombay Sapphire is the house brand. We also have Greenall's, Tanqueray and Crown Jewels." The latter is a staggering 50 per cent by vol. He is blase about which one might taste best: "We keep the gin in the freezer so that it is viscous and cold. You can scarcely taste it." I opt for the house brand.
Gilberto lifts a glass bottle fitted with a dropper and shakes a couple of drops of Martini Extra Dry into the glass. Then he fills it to the brim with gin - a fifth of a bottle of gin. This is a deadly martini. Then he takes a knife and pares a thick slice of zest from a lemon. This is the important part. The zest must be snapped down its length to release the stinging juices, which he smears around the rim before dropping it into the glass. That is it. God, it tastes wonderful.
Gilberto makes about 100 martinis a day. Half of them are gin, half of them vodkatinis. There is no ice and therefore no dilution of the spirit - he wags a disapproving finger at the idea of either shaking or stirring, especially when there is ice in it: "It dilutes, it dilutes." And if you cannot drink your martini fast enough (not that I have any problems of this nature) he will run it through a contraption from the freezer which, with ice safely contained between its double walls, will cool but not dilute.
Strength seems to be critical. Indeed, this is a serious drink. "I like to have a Martini," wrote Dorothy Parker. "Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table. After four I'm under my host!" So how many can Gilberto drink? He is modest. "A martini," he intones with Italian playfulness, "is like a woman's breast. One is not enough, two is just right and three is too many." But I am not sure he is telling the truth, because Mark, his accomplice barman, lets me into a little-known secret.
"These are not the best martinis in the world," Mark explains. "They are to be found at Gilberto's house. He makes them in these glasses," he flourishes a huge crystal tumbler, "so they stay cool longer. And, of course, they are much, much bigger."
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