What is in the Martini Flight box?

Six 50ml miniatures, one of every Martini, from the Tuxedo of the 1890s to the Sakura of 2015, plus an illustrated brochure telling the history drink by drink and a card we write by hand. It comes in a presentation box.

Which Martinis are included?

Tuxedo, Gibson, Vesper, Lychee Martini, Pisco Martini and Sakura Martini.

How do you drink the Martini Flight?

Keep the bottles in the freezer, then pour each into the smallest chilled glass you own and drink while the surface is still shivering. Drink them in order for the history, in any order at all for the joy.

How much is the Martini Flight and can it be sent as a gift?

It is £30 and comes in a presentation box with a card we write by hand, so it sends well as a gift. It is just as good kept.

The Martini Flight · Myatt's Fields

Prologue

Six chapters of one drink.

The Martini has no single history. It has chapters.

Nobody invented it. There is no first Martini, no bartender, no date. There is a clean spirit, a dry French vermouth and ice you could finally buy, all arriving within a few decades of each other in the nineteenth century, and then, in 1904, a barman at the Paris Ritz printing a recipe under the name Dry Martini. Every generation since has rewritten it. Bartenders have swapped the spirit, dropped the olive, named it after a character in a novel, and turned it the wrong way up. None of them asked permission.

We have chosen six of those rewrites. Pour them in order and you have the story, more or less, from the Gilded Age to the present day. Come with us.

None of these are quite the original recipe. A cocktail that rests in a bottle for months is a different creature from one shaken fresh and drunk on the spot, so we adjust each one to land right at the moment you open it. The history is theirs. The balance is ours.

Tuxedo

Tuxedo Club, New York · 1890s

The Martini before it settled down. At the Tuxedo Club, the Gilded Age country retreat that also gave the dinner jacket its American name, members drank a sharper, stranger cousin of the dry Martini. First written down in 1900, lifted by a whisper of absinthe and, depending on the bartender, a touch of maraschino. Dry, saline, faintly herbal. This is roughly where the Martini we know begins.

Lychee Martini

New York · early 1990s

The Martini becomes a category. In the Asian-fusion boom of early-nineties New York, the coupe stopped belonging to gin. A sake bar, a Korean kitchen and a fusion dining room all have a claim to the first lychee Martini. What they share is the moment the glass opened up to anything floral and served straight up. Ours takes a dash of lychee, not a slug. Floral, and only just sweet.

Gibson

New York or San Francisco · ~1908

The Martini learns to be savoury. Nobody agrees who first asked for an onion in place of an olive. A New York illustrator and a San Francisco businessman, both called Gibson, both with a claim. The first one dates to 1908, but the pickled onion that now defines it was not fixed for decades after. We infuse ours with pickled onion, so the savoury edge is there the moment the bottle leaves the freezer.

Pisco Martini

Leyenda, Brooklyn · 2015

The Martini goes looking for new spirits. When Ivy Mix opened Leyenda, her Latin American bar in Brooklyn, she rebuilt an earlier pisco Martini in fourths: gin and pisco, sweet vermouth and dry. She called it the En Cuarto. Pisco, the grape brandy of Peru and Chile, brings warmth and a faint must of fresh fruit. Ours is a take on hers, under a plainer name.

Vesper

Casino Royale · 1953

The Martini enters fiction. Ian Fleming wrote the Vesper for James Bond before any bartender had made one. Gin, vodka, and an aromatised wine where the vermouth should be. We blend Lillet Blanc and Cocchi Americano in place of the Kina Lillet that Fleming knew, now long discontinued, with London Dry gin and our own vodka. Rounder and more floral than a Martini, with a clean, honeyed lift.

Sakura Martini

Bar Goto, New York · 2015

The Martini, turned around. At Bar Goto on the Lower East Side, Kenta Goto built a Martini where sake leads and gin follows, lifted by a touch of maraschino and finished with a salted cherry blossom where the olive once sat. Delicate, saline, gently floral. The Martini handed to another tradition, and handed back changed.

Closing

The journey continues.

The Martini has been dry and savoury, literary and floral, Peruvian and Japanese. Two of the six in this box were made in a single year, 2015, which tells you this history is still being written. These are six of our favourite turns it has taken so far.

It arrives as something to open, not just something to drink. The six bottles sit nested in a tray inside a printed box lined with our own glassware artwork, the brochure you have just read tucked alongside, and a card we write by hand resting on top. Yours to open slowly. Or handed over, with your words on the card.

How to drink them

Six bottles, one of every Martini. Put them in the freezer. Pour each into the smallest chilled glass you own, a coupe if you have one, and drink while the surface is still shivering. The Gibson is infused with pickled onion, so it pours savoury with nothing to add. The Sakura is traditionally crowned with a salted cherry blossom.

Drink them in order for the history. In any order at all for the joy.

In the box

Six 50ml miniaturesOne each of our Martini range, bottled at 50ml and sealed ready for the freezer.

An illustrated brochureThe history of the drink, told chapter by chapter, printed beautifully to keep.

A hand-written gift cardYour message on one of our gift cards, written by hand and sealed in the box before it leaves us.

A presentation boxOur new presentation box, lined with our latest artwork, bottles nested in a tray. Made to be opened slowly.

The Martini Flight gift box, open: the six miniatures, the illustrated brochure and a hand-written card

Clemency & CyrusFounders, Myatt's Fields