Monday, July 5, 2021

THE MENISCUS MARTINI

 Being of sound mind, I would never dream or telling another human being how to make a martini.  You go into a bar, order your drink, and let the person behind the bar make it the way they want to make it.  If the drink’s no good, well the bartender has gone to hell in their own way.  And of course you're in a kind of hell because you have to drink it.

 

The one below, as I recall, was in a hotel bar in Baltimore, from which I expected nothing put delivered very well.

 



However, if pressed, and as you almost see it in the picture above, the one thing I would advise in making a martini is to give the drinker a full and generous pour. A meniscus that rises gently above the top of the glass is the mark of any great or even good martini. 

 

I was reminded of this (as if I needed reminding) , by something in Jonathan Meades’s book Pedro and Ricky Come Again, a piece titled ‘The old man’s comforts and how he gained them’

 

Meades describes an ancient female relative named Aunt Doll who was a drinker of Mackeson, Marsala, port and sherry who asked the young Meades to pour her a drink, with the admonition, ‘Oh go on. Fill it just to the brim you Jonathan my tresshure.  I like to see a hearty meniscus on moine.’


This is Jonathan Meades, though that is not his Aunt Doll. (Photo by Tim Mercer).




I’d say a meniscus is far too subtle and classic a thing to be genuinely ’hearty’ but I get the point. Here’s one I did earlier.

 


Photo by Luna Yearwood-Smith.

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