ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 20, 1996 TAG: 9611200008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE BERRY KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
When Sex on the Beach goes out with the tide and the Fuzzy Navel becomes a fuzzy memory, the martini will endure as America's pre-eminent cocktail.
Brisk as a Boston breeze, crisp as a banker's suit, the martini towers above all other drinks with its blend of simplicity and verve. If Dom Perignon, upon discovering champagne, said he was tasting stars, an icy martini can be likened to tasting silver.
George Burns drank two a day right up to his death at 100. Franklin Roosevelt mixed one soon after signing the act that repealed Prohibition. And when correspondent Ernest Hemingway ``liberated'' Paris' Ritz Hotel for the Allies in 1944, his first order of business was to order a martini.
``The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory,'' said social commentator Bernard De Voto. ``It is one of the happiest marriages on Earth and one of the shortest-lived.''
The international symbol for a bar, of course, is the neon martini glass. New bars devoted to this classic are popping up around the country. But despite its venerable status, not too many years ago the martini was in danger of losing its prestige.
During the 1970s, when such fruity concoctions as margaritas, tequila sunrises and pina coladas came into vogue, martinis were rejected by the young as a symbol of pent-up middle class establishment. Even presidential candidate Jimmy Carter ridiculed ``$50 martini lunches'' to connect to the beer crowd.
Esquire in 1973 called the martini ``a bitter, medicinal-tasting beverage'' that ``stands for everything from phony bourgeois values and social snobbery to jaded alcoholism and latent masochism.'' And as late as 1985 Time magazine eulogized it as ``an amusing antique.''
But the drink has made a comeback in the 1990s - especially among adults between 25 and 35, said Lisa Hawkins of the Distilled Spirits Council.
``I think as people mature, so does their taste,'' Hawkins said. ``This group is turning their jeans in for business suits. They want a drink that says they have arrived. They want a drink that symbolizes sophistication and elegance.''
While the properly mixed martini is clear, its origin is somewhat cloudy.
Conventional wisdom links its name to Martini & Rossi vermouth of Italy, but there is no solid basis for that. By most accounts the martini is roughly 100 years old, though one tale has a bartender mixing the first at San Francisco's Occidental Hotel in the 1860s. By the turn of the century it entered the mainstream, even earning a reference in a 1904 O. Henry tale.
What makes a perfect martini is a source of endless debate.
Gin, vermouth and olive have been dubbed the bartender's Holy Trinity, but the fact is that as many as one-half of all martinis sold in bars today are made with vodka.
New variations on martinis crop up constantly, such as the lemon vodka martini (with Cointreau and a twist of lemon) and the Cajun martini (vodka, vermouth, garlic, jalapeno pepper and pickled onions.) The martini has evolved in other ways as well.
Sixty years ago the standard mix was three parts gin to one part vermouth, but over the years Americans have thirsted for increasingly dry versions.
According to Barnaby Conrad's ``The Martini'' (Chronicle Books, $24.95), Winston Churchill's recipe was to pour gin into a pitcher and glance briefly at a bottle of vermouth across the room. Similar anecdotes and quips abound.
In an early episode of the television series ``M*A*S*H,'' Alan Alda's war-weary Hawkeye Pierce cannot overemphasize how strong he wants his drink, telling the bartender: ``I'd like a dry martini a very dry martini. A very dry, arid, barren, desiccated, virtual dust bowl of a martini.''
So arid did the nation go that in the late 1950s a vermouth distributor ran an ad disparaging the trend. It showed a man eking out vermouth with an eyedropper. The caption: ``Don't be a faddist. Don't be a sadist. A dry martini is not a hooker of gin or vodka. It's a cocktail.''
But with today's specialty bars offering more than 50 varieties, including a blue one made with Curacao, the martini is clearly no longer a one-size fits all drink.
It doesn't hurt the martini's revival that alcohol is no longer considered an automatic menace to health. (Knute Rockne may have offered the best formula for moderate imbibing: Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.)
For years wine lovers have touted studies that link moderate consumption of red wine to good health.
But Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of the Harvard Medical School found that moderate amounts of liquor had a similar effect on the body.
``People who drink two martinis at dinner are no different from those who get two glasses of red wine,'' he told the American Heart Association last year.
Buy that man a drink.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:by CNB