Martini Variations(By Cameron Mitchell)
A well-made Gin Martini is a cool and sophisticated thing. It's the quintessential cocktail - clean, simple, elegant, and briskly aromatic.
By way of contrast, a Vodka Martini is, in all its steely neutrality, a good excuse to eat olives. It really needs added flavour in the form of a small snack to give it multidimensional appeal.
But the sheer invisibility of Vodka also makes it an ideal foundation for improvisation. With no overt taste of its own, it forms a clean palette on which to build other unique flavours and aromas. Because of its strong silent character, it can play a supporting role to an eclectic range of tastes that makes the classic Gin Martini seem a bit unimaginative by comparison.