Vodka · Stir · Coupe · 4 min
Dirty Martini
A Martini with a splash of olive brine: cloudy, savoury and a little salty. The IBA listed it with vodka from 2011 to 2020, and gin works just as well.
What's in it
- 60ml (2 oz) Vodkaor gin
- 10ml (⅓ oz) Dry vermouth
- 10ml (⅓ oz) Olive brinefrom the olive jar
- 1 Green olive optional
How to make it
- Chill a coupe.
- Fill a mixing glass with ice and add the vodka, dry vermouth and olive brine.
- Stir for twenty to thirty seconds, until the mixing glass frosts.
- Strain into the chilled coupe and drop in a green olive.
Other ways to make it
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What cocktail can I make?Where it came from
David Wondrich traces the idea to 1901, when bartender John E. O'Connor served a Dry Martini with muddled olives at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Brine itself first appears in print in G.H. Steele's 1930 My New Cocktail Book, in a drink called the Perfect. Franklin Roosevelt is often linked to the drink, though there is no firm evidence he used brine. It took hold in the 1990s, usually with vodka and poor olive juice, until bottled bar brines such as Dirty Sue, launched in 2004, cleaned it up.
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