Vodka.
I abhor gin martinis. I especially abhor gibsons.
Good olives marinated in vodka = yum
Seriously? Gin’s the only hard liquor I’ve ever been able swallow straight down without gagging. Not that I neccesarily enjoyed it, but the taste of gin doesn’t bother me. Vodka, however, seems like I’m drinking rubbing alcohol.
Gin, definitely, though it seems that at least around here most ‘specialty’ martinis are made with vodka. Which I don’t really understand, what with vodka being one of the most tastless, pointless liquors to grace this fine planet. If you’re going to get plastered on rubbing alcohol there’s got to be a more cost effective way than with a vodka ‘martini’. Gads!
Martini Australis
Take a bottle of Tanqueray gin. Open it and fill the little airspace with Cinzano. Replace the cap and place the bottle in the freezer for twenty-four hours. Serve the contents in a chilled beer glass without the olive. Or drink straight from the bottle.
Another Troglodyte here: Ketel One, up with a twist.
Definitive Martini:
Rinse glass and shaker with Vermouth and crushed ice to coat the sides.
Add uncrushed ice to the shaker.
Add gin. Your choice. I like Bombay Sapphire or Geneva Square Gin.
Show it the extra-dry vermouth. Maybe even from the other side of the room. If you must then throw a little (a bloody small amount) into the shaker as well.
Put lemon into a small sieve and pour the mixture through it into the glass.
Enjoy
Heh heh. I think you nailed it.
I mean, what sounds more sophisticated?
“I’ll have gin with a couple of olives.”
or
“I’ll have a very dry Bombay Sapphire martini with olives.”
People who don’t believe in more than one kind of martini are only a little less objectionable than people who don’t believe in more than one kind of barbecue.
Realy, I;m a “rinse the glass with vermouth” guy. I’ve done taste-tests with gin from rinsed and straight glasses - the flavor changes.
I also started on vodka martinis but was mistakenly served a gin martini at a bar once. It changed my life.
All in all, though, at 90% of the bars I go to, I’ll either be drinking scotch or whatever they have on tap.
I don’t know if perhaps this should go in Great Debates, since it’s witnessing, but I was brought up in Bombay Sapphire, which is still a legitimate chosen faith and deserves ardorous devotion, but I have seen the light of the cult that is PLYMOUTH GIN.
So, in my fantasies, Plymouth with a bit of olive brine. As it happens in the real world, Sapphire with a touch of vermouth and some olives.
Anybody interested in Martinis should browse through this guys brillant online gallery.
Vodka’s not high on my list, that’s for sure. Bad vodka tastes, as you say, like rubbing alcohol. Top-shelf vodka doesn’t, but it doesn’t taste like much of anything else, either. It’s hard liquor for people who don’t like the taste of any hard liquor.
I love a dark and positively ancient tequila, a smoky-smooth and elderly scotch, a nearly-black sugarcane rum, or a well-mellowed high-proof bourbon. I have made good friends with more than one XO cognac and I know of a rye whiskey that’s a delight to sip on. I drink them slow and straight. I don’t drown the taste in other fluids or squinch up my eyes and hurl it down my throat like some vile medicine to cure sobriety.
With far less delight I’ve downed white rums and white tequilas, vodkas, stomach-burning bourbons and shudder-producing scotches of vicious harshness, and a ridiculously potent and inflammable jet fuel claiming to be grain alcohol flying under the deceptively innocent monicker “Everclear”.
Then there’s gin, and then brake fluid.
I adore good gin. I also like good scotch, sippin’ vodkas (generally the flavored ones) and (only) really good bourbon, and I’m an insufferable beer snob.
Speaking of scotch, I took alice_in_wonderland’s recommendation of using scotch to smooth out the martini. Not my thing, unfortunately.
You have to use it pretty sparingly, otherwise it’s nasty.
Thank you, I’m in your boat. I can do a heavily flavored vodka martini, but straight up, no way. The only sensation I get is ALCOHOL, because there are no other competing flavors. With gin, there are all the aromatics, and with a wetter martini, you get the vermouth flavor as well.
Make sure to put mine on the rocks, I hate that silly, tippy, martini glass, and the ice keeps the last bit of the drink cold. That last swig of room temperature gin isn’t fun, and I can’t just suck down martini’s quick without getting fall-down drunk.
As a bartender, I always ask. Most people drink vodka martinis these days; I probably serve more than twice as many vodka martinis vs. gin martinis. I don’t even get involved in the “classic martini” argument because drinks, like everything else, evolve over time. “Extra dry” used to mean more vermouth, and now it means not very much vermouth at all.
I also ask if you want it straight up or on the rocks; most people drink it straight up. (The glass is half the point for a lot of people; that’s why there are tons of “martinis” out there that are basically mixed drinks straight up. People love that stupid glass.)
I do have to say, however, that people who like really dirty martinis are amateur martini drinkers in my opinion. 
I had actually never heard of a dirty martini until I had a Christmas party this past year and had a friend request one. I assumed it was a martini with olive juice, because olive juice would indeed make a martini “dirty” (cloudy), so I added some, and he loved it. And yeah, he is kind of a lightweight drinker generally, but a nice guy.
As far as gin martinis go, I stay away. Gin makes me weird and mean. I once threw a package of frozen chicken leg quarters at somebody after having a lot of gin martinis. The frozen chicken leg quarters package him in the chest. I was later embarrassed. So I stay away from gin.
I mix mine about 2:1=gin:vermouth. I’ve heard when the drink was invented, in Gold Rush California, it wa 1:1. Mixing them 2:1 makes it possible to have one or two more, without feeling really, really bad next day.
On the absense of vermouth: I think some vermouth is essential or it’s not a martini. However, to be fair those who disagree, it should be noted that even if you omit the vermouth entirely, you get a substantial amount of meltwater from the ice, in the process of shaking, meaning that they’re not drinking straight gin as is so commonly alleged. I demonstated this to myself by putting gin and vermouth in the shaker, and then putting the shaker into the freezer for about an hour. I did it because I like them as cold as possible, and I thought this was a way to achieve that. After the hour, I removed the shaker, put in some ice, and shook–and was surpised to see that when I poured the drink the level in the glass was a good centimeter below were it ordinarily would have been. Or put another way, it turns out that the meltwater accounts for a substantial part of the volume of the drink.
Here’s the official Staff Report answer (subtitled manhattan and Gaudere go boozing).
If someone asks for a “martini,” otherwise unmodified, it’ll be gin and vermouth.
At the risk of starting a war, I’m with Alice. Beefeater is one of the premier gins on the planet. Bombay is okay, but not worth the money.