cocktail review no. 31 - Fifty-Fifty

Whew! I think I need a drink after all this talk about family and ancestors.

I hope everybody had a good Superbowl Sunday. I sure did. It was weird to be home and watching the game with the folks. I haven't done it in two years, you see. I was away in Korea last season, and the Koreans aren't so big on football. (Excuse me, my non-North American readers; I mean gridiron.)

I also followed the season more closely than ever before. I watched as many Chargers games as I could and actually kept track of their wins and losses. And they almost made it, but not quite. Oh well, congrats to New Orleans on the defeat of those dastardly Colts.

To business! In the world of gin, there are martini drinkers, Gibson drinkers, gin and tonic drinkers, gin fizz drinkers, Dubonnet cocktail drinkers... And in the world of martini drinkers, there are straight martini drinkers; double martini drinkers; dirty martini drinkers; dry martini drinkers; extra dry martini drinkers; extra dry double martini drinkers; and even some dry double dirty martini drinkers (like me). There are also vodka martini drinkers, but we won't count them, because

they're dead inside

if brains were bees, there'd be no honey between their ears

they were born without tastebuds, genitals, or any sense of culture or refinement

they have questionable taste. Then there are the fifty-fifty folks. A "dry" martini is one that has a higher ratio of gin to vermouth; a dry martini will have, say, only three-quarters of an ounce of vermouth mixed in with the shot of gin, instead of an ounce. An extra-dry martini will have no vermouth; just gin. (Hardcore gin drinkers only!) The fifty-fifty is the antithesis of the dry martini. It possesses a more equal ratio of gin to vermouth. A fifty-fifty ratio, in fact.

• 1½ ounces gin
• 1½ ounces dry vermouth
• 1 cocktail olive

In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine the gin and vermouth. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with the olive.

This isn't actually a takeoff on the martini. It's an ancient ancestor, a proto-martini, as it were. Time was, martinis were consumed with an equal ratio of gin to vermouth. Only later did folks reduce the vermouth-gin proportion, creating "dry" and "extra dry" martinis.

The fifty-fifty has now faded into obscurity. Nobody drinks them anymore, so far as I know. I mixed one up once, way back in Wyoming, when I was just starting down the road to bartenderism. At the time, I thought it was awful. I had just begun drinking, though. I didn't like martinis yet, and didn't even know what to expect from vermouth. Needless to say, the fifty-fifty wasn't up my alley.

On a whim, I mixed a second one just the other night. After sitting for Lesson 3 down in Riverside last week, and then taking (and passing) the test on Saturday, I was sick of hearing about martinis and Manhattans and Rob Roys, dry and extra dry. I wanted the antithesis of dry. And suddenly I remembered my old friend the fifty-fifty. MAN, it tasted good. The stellar tang of gin was still there still. But the vermouth finally got its day in court. It layered itself like a silken veil over the gin: a spicy, herbal purdah, easing itself past the tongue to the back of the throat, underscored by the coolness and the body of the gin. It was a precisely equal partnership. The two spirits formed a symbiotic relationship within the confines of the cocktail glass, creating a familiar but now more intense flavor. The drink is easy on the draw, pleasant on the finish, delicious all 'round. I like martinis a lot better these days.

I've fallen in love with gin (good gin, mind you, like Broker's). Still, it doesn't get too much better than the fifty-fifty, folks. Try it and see.