Dirty & Fresh Martini
An Olive Oil-washed Martini that's Pretty F****** Dynamite
This is going to be a short one — I’ve got two consulting gigs coming due at the exact same time, so instead of a deep dive of a classic, how about a shallow dive of something I’m developing for one of these projects?
The first time I tried olive-oil washed gin, I hated it. Second time too, actually. I admit I had started to think it was a myth. Turns out, it’s just that I’m a little stupid.
Briefly, about Fat Washing
Fat “washing” a spirit is to combine it with some form of fat, let it sit for some small amount of time, then put it in the freezer — everything that’s not alcohol (the fat) freezes, and the alcohol, because of its lower freezing point, doesn’t. Come back in 8 hours and you can remove the solidified fat like a puck. Put the rest through a coffee filter to get whatever’s left, and you have a spirit, more or less completely fat free, and yet infused (“washed”) with the flavor of the fat. It’s pretty neat.
But what fat to use? Everyone always goes straight to bacon, which can be ok if you keep the infusion small and subtle. In general I tend to shy away from animal fats, which are tricky, and nearly always too much (I’ve had probably 60 animal fat-washed cocktails in my life, and 4 of them were good). My favorite fat wash, the only one I’ve ever repeated on menus, is browned butter, which is sublime in both aged rum and calvados. More on that someday.
Olive Oil
But Olive Oil? Growing up I always thought of olive oil as a soft and neutral flavor, like a healthier canola oil. Turns out, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.
It wasn’t until a proper olive oil tasting at an Italian farm a few years ago that I was acquainted with just how incredible fresh olive oil can be. It was like expecting marijuana but experiencing mushrooms, or that scene in the Wizard of Oz where she steps from sepia into Technicolor. I had no idea how good, how charismatic, how explosively flavorful olive oil could be: it was floral and grassy, pungent and intense, dandelions and hazelnuts and chamomile, with a rising smoldering pepper in the back of my throat that felt for a moment like the first step of anaphylactic shock but, I came to understand, is the happy burn of quality.
I belabor the point because maybe some of you are in the same camp. If so, there is probably a specialty olive oil vendor near you. You should go out of your way for this. I both live and work in the world of flavor, and yet, had I not sought out that farm in Tuscany, I probably still wouldn’t fully know what I was missing.
Olive Oil-Washed Gin
So there were two truths:
I tasted an olive-oil washed gin and hated it because it sucked.
Later, I realized that I had never had a great olive oil.
Number (2) happened after (1), but I never updated my understanding of (1) with the lessons of (2). So when my consulting partner Adam swore up and down that Olive Oil-washed Gin Martinis are sublime, it clashed with my experience. I decided to try it with something I had at home, which is the best looking olive oil you can get at Costco:
This seems OK, doesn’t it? The harvest date? The lot number? The details about the fields or whatever? The memory of that Italian farm had faded a bit, as sensory memories do, and this Costco oil was good — not explosive, not intense, but good enough — so I tried it in 3 different gins:
Disaster. Terrible. This sucked. As bad as the first time. It smelled stale oil, like what I imagine the uniform hamper at a McDonalds to smell like, and the taste was roughly the same. Tried it with dry vermouth, sherry, lemon peel, salt, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. Remembering that initial tasting, I reached out to Adam to see if he was using exceptional, artisanal oil and he responded that he was, so once again, I endeavored to rediscover artisanal olive oil:
I put it, 8:1, into gin (8oz gin for every 1oz olive oil), let sit for a few hours, then freeze, and filter.
“HOLY GOD.” read my notes. “This is next level. This is so fucking good. Maybe 800x better?” The nose is somehow even more evocative than the oil itself, the alcohol elevating its sweet florals, almost begging you to drink it. I’m embarrassed to have needed to “discover” — twice! — what a lot of people intuitively know, but nonetheless, here we are. Olive oil be incredible.
Olive-Oil Washed Martini
Just oil-washed gin and dry vermouth, at 3:1, is very, very good. It preserves the nose, and everything that’s wonderful about the infusion. The problem is that it’s a touch hollow toward the end. The richness of the body and the heavy cloak of olive oil, delicious as it is, kinda prevents the gin from attaining that brilliant crystalline radiance that a great Martini needs, so instincts told me that it wanted a touch more sweetness. Tried it with:
Blanc vermouth — better in a lot of ways, but too sweet.
Manzanilla sherry — too dry, and weirdly, the olive oil infusion blends too well with the sherry, obfuscating what makes the infusion so cool in the first place
Amontillado Sherry — oxidative character is great, particularly up front, complementing but not disappearing into the infusion. Finish is still a little hollow.
Cocchi Americano — Dynamite finish, all lovely spice and welcome light bitterness, but too sweet at 3:1 and front palate distracts from the olive oil infusion.
So basically, I wanted something with the front palate of amontillado sherry, an olive and gin midpalate, and the finish of Cocchi Americano, and I wanted all of it to complement the coolness of the infusion without distracting too much (or at all) from what makes it so great in the first place.
After trying all of these with five different types of infused gin (Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire, Ford’s, Aviation, and Tanqueray 10), trying all the vermouths alone and in every half-and-half or 3:1 combination available, and attempting small doses of liqueurs like bitters (not better), I’ve come to something I think is pretty phenomenal.
I’ll still continue to workshop it — I’ve only been working with this drink for about a week, it might still get better — but for now, I’m thrilled with this. I think it’s great.
(The recipe is built to be pre-batched and poured, hence the stupid measurements. The one in milliliters is more correct, and measurements in ounces are the ones built for standard US jiggers. It’s a 4:1 martini, and the vermouth quotient is itself split 3:1).
Dirty & Fresh Martini
Fat 2.5oz (80ml) Olive-Oil Washed Ford’s Gin
0.5oz (15ml) Cocchi Americano
1tsp (5ml) Amontillado Sherry
Add all ingredients to a frozen mixing glass. Add ice, and stir for 15-20 seconds. Strain off the ice and garnish with a Castelvetrano olive, on onion, and/or three drops of very high quality olive oil.
