A Cocktail for Stanley Tucci
Editorial note: This was originally written – and very nearly completed – on May 29th, 2022, two days after Tucci’s video was posted. For reasons obscure even to me, I did not publish it at the time. Upon review in February 2024, I have added photographs and the third footnote, and made minor edits for clarity. Otherwise, this is a faithful representation of my original thoughts on the topic:
Stanley Tucci recently posted a charming Instagram video of him making cocktails for his Searching for Italy crew. I enjoyed watching it, as I’ve generally enjoyed his pivot to culinary travelogues and his high-profile interest in mixing cocktails at home. This video, in particular, lends itself to the kind of objectively unnecessary (and lengthy!) academic analysis that I know my readers crave – in no small part because it concerns the Martini, that most analyzed and most analyzable of classic cocktails. What follows is a case study I simply couldn’t resist undertaking, which concludes with a recipe recommendation for Mr. Tucci and anyone with a similar taste in cocktails.
(Before proceeding, I recommend watching the above video in its entirety. It’s a hair under six minutes, and would be very enjoyable even if it didn’t provide a pretext for me to discuss mixological theory.)
Tucci’s Martini technique is as follows: First, he pours dry vermouth into a mixing glass with ice. All told, he stirs it for about 20-25 seconds. Then he strains off the liquid, the goal having been to just slightly flavor the ice with the vermouth. He then adds gin to the remaining ice and stirs for another 20-25 seconds (throwing appropriate shade at James Bond for taking his Martinis shaken).* Then he strains it into stemmed glasses, expresses lemon peels over the top, and then drops the peels in.
Cocktail recipes should suit the purposes for which they are intended. A Tom Collins is meant to be refreshing and sat with for a while, so we serve it in a big glass with lots of ice and emphatically more seltzer than gin; an Earthquake is a slow sipper and a reminder that Lautrec could drink us all under the table, a challenge as much as a beverage, so we serve it bone dry and at room temperature.
Tucci says several things that suggest the purpose for which his Martini recipe is intended:
“You don’t want to have too much vermouth…you don’t want to overpower the gin.”
“Now this has sat, because what you don’t want is for the drink to be too, as they say, ‘hot.’”
“Taste the alcohol, but you want that to be something that is subdued.”
“You’re going to get all the flavors of the gin, with a hint of the vermouth.”
Between these statements and the technique he used, we can do a little triangulation to get to the intent behind the drink.
It would appear that Tucci is in the market for something that is both gin-forward and refreshing, even veering on crushable. His recipe produces a highly diluted cocktail. The Martini’s savory side has been dispensed with in favor of the bright citrusy one. To the extent that the vermouth contributes flavor, it is slight – less even than the lemon peel, particularly because the latter is dropped into the glass and will continue to in infuse into the cocktail over time. The core of the recipe is the Tanqueray Ten, proofed down to a drinkable strength (again, not too hot!) and only lightly seasoned with flavors which complement those in the gin: lemon and a hint of dry vermouth.
Regular readers know that this is not how I would make a Martini.** However, I have a different purpose in mind. For me, a Martini is an evening drink, big and bracing, preprandial in the Emburian tradition of cocktails. I like mine hot, and I like vermouth; I would rather balance my Martini by adding more vermouth flavor as a counterpoint to the gin than by lowering the proof to reduce the presence of the gin.
Tucci appears to be after something else. At two in the afternoon on a seaside Italian terrace, I would sooner have his drink than my own – and I would be more willing to have a second round as well. (Granted, for the stated purpose I would probably pick a different cocktail, but that’s immaterial to this exercise.)
Tucci’s recipe also provides a window into his personal tastes. I am reminded of his famous Negroni video from early in the pandemic, in which he mixed it 2:1:1 rather than equal parts, and shook it rather than stirring or building. It seems reasonable to infer that Tucci is a gin fan, and will want it to be more rather than less present in his cocktails. It also appears that he prefers more dilution in his drinks in general than I do. Remember, shaking dilutes more rapidly than stirring does, and since we usually do them for comparable lengths of time, shaking will in practice dilute more in total than stirring does. For me, the purpose of the Negroni is akin to that of an Old Fashioned: I want to sit with it for a while, and I want it to start spirit-forward and gradually open up as the ice melts. For Tucci, it’s a closer cousin to, for instance, the Corpse Reviver #2: something in the Craddock school of drinks, which are meant to be “drunk quickly, while [they’re] still laughing at you.” That’s why he serves it up rather than on the rocks, and although I would probably stir it rather than shaking if that were my goal, shaking is an efficient way to achieve a slightly lower-ABV result. I should note as well that Tucci and I (and many bartenders) are in agreement that the Negroni often tastes better 2:1:1 than 1:1:1, which, among the choices he makes that one might contest, is the one that has the greatest impact on the drink’s flavor.
If I can hazard a reasonable guess at Tucci’s cocktail tastes from these two videos, I believe I have a recipe recommendation for him. It’s a drink that may or may not have been invented by John Steinbeck (sources differ; it may have been one of his friends), but was in any case first published by him in his novella Sweet Thursday, the sequel to Cannery Row:
Webster F-Street Layaway Plan
2 oz. Gin
1/4 oz. Green Chartreuse
Lemon Peel
Rinse glass with Chartreuse. (Note: 1/4 oz. of Chartreuse is more than you’ll need to rinse the glass, but do NOT pour out the excess; this drink wants the full 1/4 oz.)
Shake gin with ice for 10-12 seconds and strain into rinsed glass. Express lemon peel over the top and drop in.
Steinbeck, alas, didn’t give specific proportions – he just described his drink as a Martini with Chartreuse instead of the vermouth. It’s unclear what style of Martini he had in mind. But the above, which is my go-to way of making it, tracks with Tucci’s approach. Shaking dilutes the gin efficiently; this proofed-down spirit becomes the core of the drink. The Chartreuse will be a bit more present than Tucci’s vermouth, both because it is a stronger flavor inherently and because rinsing the glass (and retaining the excess) incorporates it more directly than rinsing the ice does.***
For me personally, this is what I would make when I wanted something gin-forward but not excessively hot, with subtle citrus and herbal additions. Mr. Tucci, if you’re listening, give this one a try!
*In the video, he then rolls the drink from the mixing glass into a series of shakers in order to find one that will fit the strainer he has. This is a consequence of his being on location with limited tools, and therefore I’m not including it as part of his technique, but for what it’s worth it does push the drink even further in the diluted/refreshing direction which seems to be the overall goal.
**For the benefit of irregular readers: 3 parts gin, 1 part dry vermouth, 1 dash orange bitters, stir 10-12 seconds, strain into a cocktail glass, express a lemon peel over the top and discard.
***I’ll be honest, when I first saw Tucci’s vermouth technique, I thought, “There’s no way that contributes any vermouth flavor to the cocktail; you’re just pouring off all the vermouth.” But then I remembered Dave Arnold’s discussion of what he calls “holdback” in Liquid Intelligence: after shaking or stirring a cocktail with ice, some percentage of the mixture will adhere to the surface of the cubes as the rest is strained off. He calculates the holdback percentage to be 1-4% of the total drink for large rectangular cubes cut from block ice, or 7-9% of the total for smaller ice made by an ice machine.
Tucci stirred an ounce of vermouth in his mixing glass, which means that if Arnold’s percentages hold, anywhere from .01 oz. to .09 oz. of the vermouth could remain on the ice when he’s done. Since the outermost layer of the cubes will be the first to mix into the gin when he reuses that ice, he might theoretically get all or nearly all of that vermouth into the drink. It may not sound like much, but according to Don Lee, there are about 41 dashes of Angostura bitters to the ounce, making one dash of Angostura about .024 oz. So again, depending on the ice, Tucci’s Martini could have the rough equivalent of anywhere from 1/2 – 3 1/2 dashes of dry vermouth…per 6 oz of gin (he said he was making two of them), which is to say 1/4 – 1 3/4 dashes per Martini.
Now, that may be just enough vermouth left behind on the ice to impart some flavor to the finished drink. But I am also reminded of what my dear friend Alexander said to me when I shared this video with him, which was, “Stanley Tucci has contrived an entirely new way to not put vermouth in your cocktail.” Even the Webster F-Street Layaway Plan, which is astoundingly dry by most standards, has somewhere between eight and seventy-five times more Chartreuse per unit of gin than Tucci’s Martini has of vermouth.
