The Lemon Drop Martini
In the words of Jim Morrison, “When summer's gone, where will we be?”
Make it as fancy as you like, but always keep it cool. Photo by Clarke Condé.
As we enter the weekend that brings us into August, I think you will find the lemon drop martini will ease the transition. There is nothing all that complex about this cocktail. The ingredients go into a cocktail shaker and then are strained out into a martini glass. Some sugar the rim to balance the tart lemon. Some are so sweet already that the balance is innate. Some are so bitter they relish the flavor. Some choose to garnish. Some simply can’t be bothered adding something that will just get tossed. I will leave all of that up to you and instead focus on three recommendations to make this cocktail sing.
Do use fresh lemons and squeeze them yourself. I received a bag of fantastic Chornobyl-sized lemons this week from Skarsgard farms that worked perfectly. I tend to think that smaller lemons have more flavor, but in this case, I was wrong.
Do use cold ingredients. There will be ice in the shaker, but there is a lot of surface area in this cocktail so you are going to want to start with it as cold as you can before exposing it to an Albuquerque summer. Keep the vodka in the freezer. Chill your lemon juice. Keep your simple syrup in the refrigerator as well. Warm cocktails are (with few notable exceptions) terrible.
Do use a fancy glass. A martini garners much of its cachet from the glass. Find one you like and enjoy.
2 oz. vodka
3/4 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. lemon juice
3/4 oz. simple syrup
Ice
It really is as simple as adding the ingredient to the cocktail shaker and giving the thing a good shake. Go as crazy as you like on presentation, but don’t leave your ingredients out on the counter. Put them back in the fridge so they are cold for your next one. Then sit back and consider the words of Jim Morrison, “When summer's gone, where will we be?”