Unpopular Opinion: Serve My Martini on the Rocks

There were eight weeks of my life when I hated making Martinis.

It was the only time I ever worked at a nice cocktail bar. Not to be confused with the many, many places I’ve worked that had killer vibes and amazing drinks menus, this specific cocktail bar seemingly existed solely so people with more money than me could go on dates. It was attached to a swanky hotel in midtown Manhattan. Our uniforms were white. My boss had health insurance. Y’know, a nice bar. And anytime someone asked me for a Martini, I would cringe.

Unlike every other drink we served — which at worst engendered a simple binary question like “Would you like your Manhattan with bourbon or rye?” — the Martini usually set off a whole convoluted decision tree involving vermouth, olive brine, shaking versus stirring, and what exactly “dry” meant to the particular patron standing in front of me. My slew of follow-up questions almost always proved fruitless because the customer, through no fault of their own, often didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the very specific beverage they were after. This meant that whatever I put in front of them next was almost inevitably disappointing.

Those two months are my villain origin story, the genesis point for the profoundly twisted way I began to drink (and now prefer) my Martinis: with plenty of vermouth, orange bitters and a lemon twist, served in a rocks glass on a big, fat ice cube.

A Rock Solid Case

I can already hear the pitchforks being sharpened, so let me explain. I’ve enjoyed the living hell out of a great many Martinis that were served up. But there are times of year — particularly in late summer when it’s still hot but possible, finally, to enjoy a heartier beverage — when I’ll take a Martini on the rocks over its typical preparation 10 times out of 10.

A straight-up Martini is a slap in the face — which can be a feature, not a flaw — but I don’t always want my cocktail smacking me around. And it’s the days where the vibe is more Netflix-and-chill that the on-the-rocks Martini comes in. The ice obviously does a good job of reducing this boozy bruiser from a punch to a gentle cuddle, and that’s before I lengthen it further with a 50/50 ratio of gin to dry and white vermouths. The bitters come in next for a nice citrusy pop before the lemon twist finally settles on top, making the whole thing smell like summertime. Snappy, friendly, delightful.

There’s also the advantage of drinking this build from a user-friendly cylinder versus a top-heavy monstrosity. The Martini glass’s stale, unimaginative cone was first foisted on the American public during the silent film era, several decades after the drink itself had already achieved widespread popularity. Too narrow at the base to gracefully hold and too wide at the top to respectably drink from, the Martini glass seems to have been originally intended for Champagne — or, at least, that’s what the movie stars of the day used it for. Somewhere along the line, though, this shell picked up a new hermit crab. Though many Art Deco treasures of the 1920s and ‘30s died out, this un-ergonomic nightmare tragically wasn’t one of them, and by the time the three-Martini lunch was in its prime, the drink and the glass were inexorably fused together.

“I think the Martini’s evolution, its popularity came from people bucking tradition.”

This presents a compromise: Wouldn’t a coupe split the difference between a rocks glass and the V-glass? And split the difference it does — in the worst ways. The straight-sided nature of a coupe concentrates the alcohol fumes coming off the drink in the same way a rocks glass does, with the increased spill-ability of five ounces of liquid astride a thin, brittle stem. To be fair, there’s also the Nick & Nora glass (a piece of drinkware that I genuinely like) but that has the same name recognition problem as the coupe for those less cocktail-conscious and then some. So in short, when you’re looking for the ideal vessel for your crisp, cold Martini on a hot summer’s day no matter the closest bar cart, a rocks glass is really your most solid option.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me.

“I would take those small plastic cups that are next to a water jug over a rocks glass,” says Mandy Naglich, drinks writer and author of the recent book “How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life.” She points out that as that big, juicy cube I love so much melts, it’s going to affect the flavor compounds that are expressed in the drink. Naglich also contends that the drink’s eponymous vessel makes it more pleasant to smell and easier to drink: a Martini glass allows the boozy aroma cloud that would hover over a rocks glass or a coupe to dissipate, as opposed to focusing those ethanol molecules toward the nostrils like a laser beam. That same open shape also affects the surface tension of the drink, allowing it to cascade over the side and into the mouth of a thirsty customer with ease.

None of this, of course, changes the fact that the Martini glass sucks.

“They’re just terribly designed,” says Chockie Tom, a writer, indigenous drinks activist, and brand ambassador for Mr Black. “It’s an awkward glass for most people to drink from, it’s an awkward glass for most servers to deal with. It’s aesthetically cool if you like the ’50s for 10 seconds, but I just kind of prefer something more rounded.” Tom, who, crucially, agrees with me, feels the heft of a hearty ice cube in a hearty rocks glass adds to the storied oomph of a drink that is often best known as the cocktail of choice for the mid-century power player, even as it continues to evolve. Sienna Jevremov, head distiller and blender at Widow Jane, takes that tradition a step further, preferring her Martinis shaken and triple-strained into a rocks glass with an orange peel wrapped around an olive, pig-in-blanket-style, as a garnish.

“I think the Martini’s evolution, its popularity came from people bucking tradition,” Tom says. “So, why not continue to do it?”

Rock(s) of Ages

There is historical precedent for this preparation, too. The Martini-on-the-rocks (as it used to be hyphenated) had a brief heyday in the 1950s and early ‘60s per multiple publications at the time. Gin brands even got in on the action, with Seagram’s running a 1960 ad that read, “Who said the Martini isn’t a summertime drink? Our good host above makes a Martini-on-the-rocks that tastes fresh and frosty when it’s 90 degrees in the shade!” My sentiments exactly.

“The important thing is to be happy with what you’re drinking.”

This trend, obviously, isn’t looked at too fondly in retrospect. Drinks writer David Wondrich says that it was an “adaptation to both the decline in bartending skill and the hegemony of the Martini.” Spirits educator and genever entrepreneur Philip Duff is a little more blunt when I ask him why he thinks this trend took off in the middle of the 20th century.

“Those are the golden ages of homophobia,” he says, “and people were afraid that if you held a stemmed glass, you’d be gay.”

Bigotry aside, Duff argues that the Martini’s value lies in a short list of tenets that are simple and unbending. “A Martini is perfect because of its limitations,” he notes. “It’s small, it’s cold, it’s strong. Once you start f*cking with any of those parameters to some degree I think you ruin it.” That said, he does admit simultaneously that he’s helping his downstairs neighbor design a Martini-on-the-rocks for a new cocktail bar.

Contradictory? Sure. But embracing contradiction is the on-the-rocks Martini’s genius. What other cocktail trades a dainty glass for something utilitarian in order to turn a booze bomb refreshing? It’s a liquid poke in the eye to anyone who claims there’s a right way to make this drink.

“If [people] are going to come to the Martini they should come to it right,” Duff says, when asked about this cognitive dissonance. “And if they don’t come to it that’s OK, too. They can just drink whatever the hell they like. But the important thing is to be happy with what you’re drinking.”