13 Best Vodka Cocktails Every Home Bartender Should Know How to Make
The French Martini isn’t really French. It’s not really a Martini either. It’s unclear when it was invented or by whom, but it shows up in New York City in 1996, and starts a craze. Until then, the word “Martini” almost exclusively referred to a spirit-forward mixture of gin or vodka, possibly with vermouth. The previous “French Martinis” were subtle tweaks on the classic mold, while this one, the one that would become famous, obliterated it. It’s vodka, pineapple juice, and Chambord, not a Martini by any stretch of the imagination, but kept the name anyway, and the V-shaped glass for good measure. In his Craft of the Cocktail, Dale DeGroff calls it “one of the sparks that got the cocktail-as-Martini craze started.”
Revisit the French Martini 25 years later, and the biggest surprise is not just that it’s still delicious, but how versatile of a template the recipe is. You can put Chambord in there, of course, and it’s juicy and fleshy and sumptuous with vanilla, but the combination of vodka and pineapple juice can do a lot more. You can use creme de cassis, for a sharper, more adult French Martini, or you can go rogue and put Aperol in there, or Campari, or Benedictine, or Cynar. Or Chartreuse, for that matter, or ginger, or falernum. You can do almost anything. The worst thing it’ll be is insufficiently complex (vodka, tasting like nothing at all, sometimes has this problem). The fact that it’s about as French as French Stewart is immaterial. It’s delicious. Isn’t that what matters?
- 1.5 oz. vodka
- 0.5–0.75 oz. berry liqueur
- 2 oz. pineapple juice
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake good and hard for about eight to 10 seconds. Strain up into a conical glass (if it can have a zig-zag stem, all the better), and garnish with a piece of pineapple, or a raspberry and/or blackberry on a pick, or both, or neither.
