When Olives Became a Thing in Martinis

For over a cen­tury, the olive has main­tained its iconic sta­tus as the sig­na­ture gar­nish of sophis­ti­ca­tion and class, remain­ing the per­fect com­pan­ion to its dirty patron, the Martini. Some of the most well-known Martini lovers include John D. Rockefeller, Humphrey Bogart, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, and of course, James Bond.

A famed Frank Sinatra tale describes him offer­ing his date an olive from his Martini as a lit­mus test: ​“If she was keen on them, it was a done deal.”
See Also:Is That Olive Oil in Your Cocktail?
Despite its fre­quent asso­ci­a­tion with New York City, the first men­tion of a ​“Martinez” cock­tail was dis­cov­ered in a bar­tend­ing man­ual in San Francisco in 1887. Legend has it that a miner dur­ing the California Gold Rush walked into a bar in the city of Martinez after a suc­cess­ful gold strike and the bar­tender con­cocted the liba­tion, includ­ing what he had avail­able: a Mission olive.

In Paris, a Dr. Ammar Martini claims that his grand­fa­ther, after mov­ing from Syria to France where he ran a bar, used an olive, one of the most pop­u­lar items from his town of ori­gin, Idlib, pop­u­lar­iz­ing the gar­nish in the famed drink.

While the spe­cific ori­gin of the olive is a lit­tle blurry, as is the case with many drink gene­olo­gies, the olive stands the test of time. A sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion to the culi­nary canon, the olive in a Martini remains one of the most allur­ing embell­ish­ments of one of the most pop­u­lar drinks in high soci­ety.

The green olive has enjoyed its long­stand­ing pres­ence as the most rec­og­niz­able Martini acces­sory due to its immense pop­u­lar­ity among New York City’s elite.

Prohibition fueled the Martini’s promi­nence, as it was fairly easy to man­u­fac­ture gin in the 1920s. In the 1950s, ​“Martini Lunches” became a pop­u­lar theme of the splashy Mad Men era. The cel­e­bra­tion of this image in pop cul­ture ele­vated the pic­ture of the olive in a Martini glass to its iconic sta­tus.

To this day, plump green Sicilian olives remain the pre­miere choice of olive used by most bar­tenders.

Some bar­tenders will skewer (typ­i­cally two or three) olives and lay them across the glass for pre­sen­ta­tional pur­poses. Another method used by bar­tenders is to squeeze the juice from the olives before drop­ping them into the glass to enhance its fla­vor. Always fresh, the brine adds an extra ele­ment of sharp­ness to the pop­u­lar liba­tion.

As a gas­tro­nom­i­cal accent, the olive com­pli­ments the dis­tinct fla­vors of ver­mouth and gin, as the salti­ness of the olive cre­ates a delight­ful jux­ta­po­si­tion of crisp and brawny fla­vors.

The top five types of green olives include: Cerignola from Italy’s Puglia region, with a crisp and but­tery fla­vor; Liguria from Italy’s Northwestern region, typ­i­cally cured with bay leaves, rose­mary and thyme; Picholine, a tor­pedo-shaped French olives with a tart and nutty fla­vor; Gordal, called ​“The Fat One” in Spanish with a firm, meaty rich­ness; and Manzanilla, a Spanish olive often stuffed with pimien­tos and dressed with gar­lic.

And these days, even the oil from olives is mak­ing its way into Martinis at water­ing holes around the world to add a fruity aroma and hint of bit­ter­ness to the revered cock­tail (not to men­tion some healthy polyphe­nols).

• NPR


• Serious Eats