If you want a glass of Vodka or Gin just order the damn thing. How come every pretentious idiot has to say “Martini, extra-extra-dry” wink *wink. Or “just write Vermouth on the outside of the glass”, or “take the bottle of Vermouth to the next room open it quickly, then close it”. It’s a really annoying joke that just gets on my fucking nerves and was stupid before any of you were born.
Plus, you’re wasting money a lot of the time. At my local bars chilled Absolute costs 3 bucks and you can have it in a Martini glass if you want. An extra-extra-dry Absolute Martini costs $4.50, And the bartenter charges the $4.50 if you order it that way, just for being a dumbass
And the “whisper vermouth” line goes back at least to the 50s when I heard/read it in mags like the Playboy advisor/Esquire type. (how to be sophisticated in 10 easy lessons).There’s been pretenders ever since.
I doubt it goes back too much farther tho.In prohibition times (late teens to '33) most of the martinis swilled used vermouth more liberally to smooth out some of that bathtub gin odor/taste.
Hehe since this is the pit I didn’t mean to come across with so much epmhasis about the 80 years as a matter pof fact, it was more hyperbole than information. I was more thinking along the lines that the Martini was invented around 80 years ago, and that somebody probably first made the joke about 5 minutes later.
Knowing drinkers as I do, and considering that prohibition was repealed about 70 years ago(upon a quick check, almost exactly 70 years ago) and people had good liquor again I am willing to bet that someone made the lame joke first at least 70 years ago. And fuck no, I’m not going to try to prove that with cites.
Oh, yeah! Lame-ass liquor-poseurs… the bane of bartenders everywhere!
When I was tending bar and got one of those “extra, extra dry” orders, I’d just strain the gin/vodka into a martini glass, and wave the vermouth bottle over the glass. Customers liked that (hey, “simple pleasures”, ya know?), and I often got a better tip for going along with their “joke”.
I always felt the way wolfman does, but then, if they want to pay mixed-drink prices for straight-up drinks, it’s their money. I was more annoyed by the gits who’d sit at the bar, order a bottle of beer and a glass, and expect me to keep topping-off their glass from the bottle!
Then there were those guys who didn’t know that a “Presbyterian” was just a grownup’s “Shirley Temple” without the maraschino cherry, and would whine, “Hey, how about putting some scotch in there?”… and I’d growl under my breath “If you wanted a scotch and ginger ale, why didn’t you just say so?”.
I’m not a drinker or bar-goer, but I do recall “Hawkeye” from the TV show M.A.S.H. making several such jokes.
Hawk: “I’m trying to invent the world’s dryest Martini”.
BJ: “Yeah? How’s that?”
Hawk: “I’m going to drink this glass of gin while looking at a picture of Vermouth.”
There was also one where one of them used the “wave the bottle nearby” joke and I seem to recall one that was something like “Don’t get the Vermouth any higher than the stem” or something like that.
Of course, the main joke was that since they didn’t have any Vermouth, just the “chemistry-set” homebrew Gin, they couldn’t have had a “wet” Martini even if they wanted.
