Recipes
A’peel Martini
Two ingredients and a cold glass. A’peel Gin is citrus-led with juniper behind it, so the martini comes out bright rather than piney, and the lemon twist is doing less work than usual.
Ingredients
- 60 mL A’peel Gin (or A’peel Vodka for a vodka martini)
- 10 mL dry vermouth
- A strip of lemon peel, or an olive
Method
- Chill the glass. This matters more than anything else in the recipe.
- Stir the gin and vermouth with plenty of ice for 30 seconds.
- Strain into the chilled coupe or martini glass and finish with the lemon twist or the olive.
Where it comes from
The martini grew out of the Martinez, a sweet gin and vermouth drink from 1880s San Francisco, and dried out over the following fifty years as the vermouth shrank and the gin got cleaner. By the 1950s a “dry” martini meant almost no vermouth at all, and the vodka version followed in the 1960s. The ratio above, six to one, is a modern middle ground; use 20 mL of vermouth for a wetter drink or 5 mL for a very dry one.
A’peel Gin is A’peel Vodka redistilled with leftover citrus peel from Brisbane venues and Australian botanicals. The peel leads and the juniper follows, which is why it makes a softer martini than a London dry. The vodka version, 60 mL A’peel Vodka and 10 mL dry vermouth with a lemon twist, is the clean one; there is nothing to hide behind, which is the point.