Martini Manifesto

All things Martini, plus JGV's Thai curry soup, book and movie recommendations and links we've been loving ...

This week I got a letter from a friend describing his martini and tacitly admonished me for adding water to my straight-from-the-freezer gin, as if it were somehow unmanly to do so.

I was inordinately annoyed—inordinately because, really, who cares? To each his own.

But it got me thinking about why the Martini inspires so much emotion. What would seem an …