Make the best Martini ever with us! Up your Martini game with this selection of luxury Martini garnishes, pairings and tasty variations.
From fancy home stuffed olives to fancy Dirty Martinis, homemade pickles and more, we’re here to both elevate and vary your Dry Martini game.
The Dry Martini is possibly the greatest cocktail service of all time. It’s not a singular drink, it’s a whole category. It’s not just a cocktail, it’s a glorious ceremony and service that makes you and others feel special.
If you’re looking for information on the techniques and terminology to perfect your Dry Martini making, scroll to the bottom of this page. There you’ll find a list of our Dry Martini articles that will turn you into a Martini expert.
Let’s go!
Elevated Blue Cheese Stuffed Olives and a Fancy Dirty Martini
Olives, for some, are ubiquitous to the ceremony of their Dry Martini experience. You can of course simply buy good quality olives and serve them on the side, or inside your preferred Dry Martini. However, you’re not here for the ordinary. Therefore we have two options for the Martini drinker who loves olives and wants to take the partnership a step or two further.
The typical way to really up the olive influence in your Dry Martini is with the classic Dirty Martini recipe. This is simply a Dry Martini with as much or as little olive brine as you like, stirred down with your choice of gin or vodka and dry vermouth.
So, we took that concept and elevated both the look and flavour of the Dirty Martini and we give you the:
Fancy Dirty Martini
It’s still a combination of gin and dry vermouth with olive brine, but we’ve added a couple very simple extra steps to take the Dirty Martini to the next level.
Firstly, instead of pouring olive juice straight out of the jar, you’re going to pass it through coffee filter papers to ensure we don’t cloud up our drink or add unsightly bits of olive.
Secondly, we’re going to bottle that filtered olive brine along with some sherry. An elegant dry sherry called Manzanilla that’s barrel rested in the hot Spanish coastal town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda (if you’ve not been, you need to go). Not only is this a delicious dry style of sherry, the time in casks next to the ocean adds a subtle salinity that’s going to work beautifully with the olive brine.
Store the bottle in the fridge to keep it nice and cold and ready to use. Of course you can add as much or as little to your Dry Martini as you like, but we have a ratio for you to try that we think perfectly balances all the ingredients to give you the best possible Dirty Martini experience.
Blue Cheese Martini
Traditionally not a favourite Dry Martini of bartenders, for many reasons, but not because a Dry Martini served with stuffed olives couldn’t be good.
So we set about creating a Dry Martini stuffed olive combo anyone could be proud of. It takes a little effort, but it really is minimal, and the results are well worth it.
A creamy, herby blue cheese mix with just a hint of spice. Squashed into your favorite green olive and finished with a dip of black pepper.
We picked the herbs specifically to complement the most typical flavour profiles in classic gins. The recipe provides a punchy flavour that stands out, but doesn’t overpower the olive, and delivers a creaminess on the finish to make your Dry Martini feel even more silky.
Want to take it even further, make sure you read to the end to see the Banderilla!
Pickle it!
The Gibson, a cocktail with a ridiculously confusing history that’s for another day. What we know about the Gibson in the modern era is that it’s a Dry Martini served with cocktail onions.
You might not find many Gibsons listed on menus, but almost every quality bar will have cocktail onions hidden away somewhere ready for when one is called for. If you get really lucky, they might even make their own pickles to adorn your Gibson with.
We love a classic Gibson Martini, but as with the Dirty Martini, we’re here to take things up a notch, so here are a couple of our takes on the Gibson we think you’ll find delicious:
Red Gibson Martini
The clue is in the title here. We made red wine pickled onions to go into a Gibson. That’s really all there is to it. They’re delicious. They’re pretty. They work beautifully in a Gibson Martini with their added depth of flavour and less aggressive acidity. They’re great with cheese. They’re perfect with cold cuts or on a charcuterie board. How many more excuses do you need? Go make them.
Celery Gibson Martini
Celery, it’s one of those flavours that many people think of as very light, watery even. Yet, like cucumber, it’s actually quite a powerful flavour that will carry through a recipe. Fresh and green, savory, slightly nutty, it works really well with gin. So it seemed a natural choice for a Gibson pickle alternative…and it was!
We’ve been a little more specific here with the recipe in terms of the vermouth and bitters we recommend to complete the Celery Gibson serve. However, the star of the show are the batons of pickled celery. They’re fast to make too, as they can be ready to go with just an overnight pickling. Perfect for those who love to go the extra mile with their cocktails, but also might not be the most patient or great at planning ahead.
Off Dry Martinis
When we say Dry Martini it’s because we’re using Dry Vermouth. Within this category we can also request that our Dry Martini be Wet or Off-Dry, Very Dry, Extra Dry, Bone Dry or however else you might want to describe how much Dry Vermouth we want in our Dry Martini.
When we say Dry Martini it’s because we’re using Dry Vermouth. Within this category we can also request that our Dry Martini be Wet or Off-Dry, Very Dry, Extra Dry, Bone Dry or however else you might want to describe how much Dry Vermouth we want in our Dry Martini.
This has got nothing to do with sweetness though, as all these different preferences are simply using Gin (or Vodka) and Dry Vermouth. However, the earliest days of the Martini in the late 1800s and early 1900s were not about Dry Vermouth, they were mainly using sweet vermouth along with a splash or two of liqueurs and bitters.
This was down to the fact that gin back then was much heavier in style to the gin today as there was still the influence of grain on the base spirit. This is why the first cocktail book entry for a Martinez (seen by many as the precursor to the Dry Martini) in O.H. Byron’s ‘The Modern Bartenders’ Guide’ (1884) stated that it should be made as a Manhattan but with gin in place of whisky.
A few years later we find the first cocktail book entry for a Martini Cocktail in Harry Johnson’s ‘New and Improved Bartender’s Manual’ (1888). The recipes included orange liqueur, bitters, sweet vermouth, sweetened Old Tom Gin and even some gum syrup (a type of sugar syrup). So, certainly not a ‘Dry’ drink.
The birth of the Martini wasn’t DRY and it’s why to this day we still refer to a Dry Martini and not just Martini. It also means that there’s nothing wrong with tinkering with the gin and dry vermouth formula to create Martinis that are not entirely dry, but utterly delicious and still worthy of the baring name Martini.
Golden Fifty Fifty (50:50) Martini
A super simple off-dry Martini recipe that uses Lillet Blanc or an off-dry vermouth such as a Blanc, Blanco, Bianco (depending what country the vermouth is coming from) in place of the usual dry variety.
Beyond this change, the drink is garnished with a fragrant twist of grapefruit to get the senses buzzing before the drink even hits your lips.
It’s certainly not sweet, but it is of course less dry than the typical Dry Martini. Citrusy and fragrant, it feels celebratory and fun, perfect for the festive or holiday season, but even better in the warm golden summer evenings.
White Elderflower Martini
Bright, floral and fun. This is a great recipe for both proper Martini drinkers who fancy something a little different for a change. It’s also perfect for enticing your friends who are nervous about getting into the Dry Martini.
In the grand scheme of things, this is still a dry and elegant cocktail. This isn’t a Mai Tai. However, in the world of Martinis, this recipe is a little more playful with a less focus on the gin and a great entry point into the beautiful world of the Martini.
More Than Just a Garnish
Having such an elegantly simple formula of gin and vermouth, the choice of garnish for a Dry Martini drinker is always a big deal.
A powerful twist of lemon oil over the surface of your Dry Martini has a huge impact on the final drink. Olives in or on the side? Dirty? Onions? The choices are not only varied but important to the final end result.
This in mind we’ve taken the concept of a garnish and pushed it even further, almost to the point of being a Dry Martini pairing. However you look at it, these are some delicious options for you to try.
Mascarpone Martini
Remember when it seemed like every cocktail was fat-washed? Well, this isn’t, but as you sip your ice-cold Dry Martini, having first bitten into a rice cake topped with creamy mascarpone and honey – It’s even better!
The rich coating on the palate removes the heat of the alcohol without removing the flavours of the gin and vermouth. We didn’t develop this delicious experience, we discovered it by chance on a trip to Japan in bar K-Ya in Kyoto. Our drinks order was a Dry Martini and the bar snack happened to be a rice cake topped with mascarpone and honey, we tried them together and never looked back!
Spanish Martini
One of the most delicious and simple twists on a Dry Martini is to switch out one dry fortified wine for another. In this case, Dry Vermouth for Dry Sherry. Use Fino or Manzanilla for a more delicate variation, or if you want to go for a more pronounced change, darker and nutty that’s perfect for the cooler months, try Amontillado sherry instead.
We’d recommend a ratio of 3 parts gin to 1 part sherry to get just the right balance of flavours, but the choice is yours of course.
What goes great with Fino Sherry? Salted Almonds. So what’s the perfect accompaniment to a Fino Sherry Dry Martini, you guessed it, delicious salted almonds. We’ve gone with gourmet Marcona Almonds from Spain.
Cawsands Martini
Speaking of Sherry. We use Manzanilla Sherry in the Fancy Dirty Martini because it’s barrel rested in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a coastal town in the hot south of Spain. The time the Sherry spends in casks by the ocean influences it, making it a perfect partner for not only a Fancy Dirty Martini but also your favourite seafood.
The Cawsands Martini was designed specifically to pair with Oysters and originally written by us for Plymouth Gin. Manzanilla Sherry replaces the dry vermouth and fresh dill floats elegantly in the ice cold mixture looking like fine seaweed.
For all the details of this recipe and many more, you’ll need to get a copy of our book, ‘How to Make Better Cocktails’. It’s the perfect cocktail companion for anyone wanting to expand their knowledge of cocktails and techniques.
Banderilla
What a garnish! Maybe the best of the lot. That being said, we haven’t given it its own recipe page as it pairs with almost any Dry Martini, and could happily accompany any of your favourite aperitivo cocktails.
For the Banderilla, on to a skewer pierce the following:
1 x Pickled Silverskin Onion
1 x Cornichon
1 x Pickled Guindilla Pepper (or similar)
1 x Anchovy Fillet in Oil
1 x Candra Stuffed Blue Cheese Olive
Feel free to work on your own combinations, but we think this gives the perfect balance of richness, acidity, heat and salt.
If you can, enjoy this as a single mouthful to get the explosion and balance of all the flavours. Delicious! Just don’t forget to make plenty.
Get Stirring
That’s enough reading, go pick up your mixing glass and get stirring.
Want to read more?!
Further reading you might enjoy on the Martini and how to perfect your techniques:
More on the Dry Martini
Get Nerdy with the Dry Martini
Dry Martini Fundamentals With Junipero Gin
How to Make the Perfect Dry Martini Every Time?
Olives in cocktails
As always, don’t forget to show us what you made by tagging us!
@Candra_Drinks #MakeBetterDrinks #CandraDrinks
