BAR WON · CLASSIC COCKTAIL
Dirty Martini
฿480
A Martini that has been let off the leash. At its base is The Orientalist Spirits, a vodka built for this kind of treatment, stirred with Baldoria Umami and a splash of olive brine until the whole thing turns faintly cloudy and savoury. A strip of lemon zest goes in over the top, which sounds like a contradiction and isn't.
Vodka base, stirred rather than shaken.
Baldoria Umami and olive brine, the two-part savoury engine.
Lemon zest, a thin bright edge over the salt.
Around 35% ABV — dry, low bitterness.
How it is made
The brine is the whole argument. A dry Martini is vermouth and spirit, and the vermouth is there to soften and aromatise; a dirty Martini swaps most of that softening for salinity, so the drink reads olive rather than grape. The trick is proportion — enough brine to taste it, not so much that the spirit disappears behind it. Baldoria Umami does the work that vermouth would normally do, adding depth and a faintly marine quality that the brine then amplifies.
How it tastes
Dry and cold, with a saline thread running through it and a long savoury finish. The lemon zest sits on top of that as a clean, sharp lift, and the bitterness stays low, so nothing fights the salt. It is a Martini with the volume turned up rather than a different drink altogether.
Good to know
The dirty Martini is usually credited to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is said to have added olive brine to his Martinis in the 1940s — the story goes that he wanted the drink to smell of gin on the breath without tasting of it. Whether or not that is true, the brine trick stuck, and by the 1950s it was a standard call at the American bar. Gin is the older base for a Martini; vodka only became commonplace from the 1950s onward.
Contains alcohol.
Ingredients: The Orientalist Spirits, Baldoria Umami, Olive Brine, Lemon Zest
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