Vodka Martini — James Bond ruined the martini by ordering vodka instead

James Bond ruined the martini. Not the drink itself, but the conversation around it. When 007 ordered his vodka martini “shaken, not stirred,” he started a fifty-year argument that still rages in cocktail bars today.

Ingredients

• ½ oz vodka
• 1 oz dry vermouth
• Garnish: a lemon peel or olives

Method

Grab your mixing glass and fill it with ice. Add the vodka first, then the vermouth. Stir for thirty seconds until the mixture is ice cold — you want the glass to frost up when you pour. The stirring is crucial here. Bond got this wrong too. Shaking a martini makes it cloudy and changes the texture completely. Stirring keeps it crystal clear and silky smooth. Strain into your chilled martini glass using a julep strainer. The drink should be so cold it almost hurts to sip.

Serve

Serve this up in a martini glass — no ice. For the garnish, you’ve got two camps. Express a lemon peel over the surface to release those citrus oils, then drop it in. Or go with three olives on a pick. Never an even number of olives — it’s bad bar luck.

Pro Tip

The vodka martini is actually newer than you think. Sure, the gin martini dates back to the 1880s, but vodka didn’t really exist in American bars until after World War Two. Before that, it was this mysterious Russian spirit that nobody understood or wanted. Then the Cold War happened, and suddenly vodka became exotic, dangerous, sophisticated. Madison Avenue marketing departments went crazy for it. By the 1950s, vodka was the spirit of choice for Americans who wanted to seem worldly and modern. The martini — that ultimate symbol of cocktail sophistication — became the perfect vehicle. Bond’s first movie appearance in 1962 cemented the vodka martini as the drink of spies, executives, and anyone who wanted to project that same cool authority. Gin purists have been complaining ever since, but the vodka martini carved out its own legitimate place in cocktail history. Time to make one.