Left Bank Martini

Novice

The Left Bank Martini puts dry white wine where the vermouth would go. Gin leads, elderflower liqueur supplies the sweetness and the perfume, and a crisp unoaked white does the job of the aromatised wine without bringing botanicals of its own. That substitution is the whole design. Vermouth is wine plus herbs, and those herbs argue with elderflower. Take them away and the blossom has the glass to itself, which is exactly what a drink built to introduce an elderflower liqueur needs. It was made in 2006 at London's Cabinet Room for that liqueur's launch, a year before the bottle became ubiquitous, and named for Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Parisian quarter on the left bank of the Seine that also gave the bottle its name. Launch cocktails rarely outlive the party. This one entered the repertoire. It is shaken rather than stirred, which is unusual for anything calling itself a martini, and it lands cold, floral and unapologetically pretty.

ShakenAperitifCelebratory

Glassware: Martini Glass

Garnish: Lime Twist

Ingredients

Serves

Gin

45ml

A London Dry, holding the drink to martini posture. The juniper is the only structural thing in the glass, and a contemporary citrus-forward gin leaves the whole drink floral with nothing underneath it.

Elderflower Liqueur

30ml

A full 30ml, double the usual discipline and deliberate: the drink was built to showcase the bottle, and the wine is light enough to carry the dose. Reduce it and the drink loses its reason to exist.

Dry White Wine

30ml

Crisp, unoaked and cold. Sauvignon Blanc is the classic choice for its acidity and its lack of oak. An oaked Chardonnay puts vanilla against the blossom and turns it blowsy, and a bottle open three days does the same thing more quietly.

Instructions

Chill a martini glass.

Add the gin, elderflower liqueur and dry white wine to a shaker.

Fill the shaker with cubed ice and shake hard for 10 seconds.

Fine strain into the chilled glass.

Express a lime twist over the surface and drop it in.

Expert Tip

The wine has to be crisp, unoaked and properly cold. A Sauvignon Blanc is the classic choice and the reasoning is sound: high acidity, no oak, no residual sugar. An oaked Chardonnay puts vanilla and butter against the blossom and the drink turns blowsy within a sip. A bottle that has been open three days does the same thing more quietly. Thirty millilitres of elderflower is a large measure by any normal discipline, and here it is correct. The drink was engineered to showcase the bottle, and the wine is light enough to carry a dose that a syrupier frame would not survive. Reduce it and you have a slightly odd gin and wine drink with a floral note. Shake it hard and fine strain. A wine-based drink picks up small ice shards readily, and this one is meant to arrive completely clear and very cold.

Flavour Profile

ElderflowerWhite WineFloralCrispCitrus

Where It Comes From

It was built in 2006 at the Cabinet Room in London, for the launch of the elderflower liqueur that would become one of the most widely stocked bottles on the back bar the following year.

The name points at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the quarter on the left bank of the Seine that the liqueur itself is named after. The drink is therefore named after the bottle twice over, which is either elegant or shameless depending on how you feel about launch cocktails.

Most drinks made for a product launch die with the campaign. This one survived because it turned out to be good independently of the marketing, which is a rarer outcome than the number of launch cocktails would suggest.

Wine Instead of Vermouth

A martini is gin and an aromatised wine. This replaces the aromatised wine with a plain one, and everything else follows from that.

Vermouth is wine that has been fortified and infused with botanicals, and those botanicals are the point of it: wormwood, gentian, various barks and roots. They give a martini its dry, faintly bitter spine. They also argue directly with elderflower, which is a delicate floral note that loses any fight it is put into.

Unfortified white wine brings acidity and a little fruit and nothing else. The blossom sits on top of it unopposed. The trade is real, though: without the botanicals there is less structure, which is why the gin is a full 45ml and why it needs to be a London Dry.

The Launch Measure

Thirty millilitres of a sweet liqueur is a lot. In most drinks it would be a mistake, and elderflower in particular is usually treated as a modifier at 10 or 15ml because it perfumes everything it touches.

Here the dose is the design. The drink exists to make an argument for the bottle, so the bottle gets the room to make it. What makes that survivable is the wine: at 30ml of something crisp and acidic, there is enough sharpness in the glass to stop the sweetness settling.

Try it at 15ml and the point becomes obvious. It is perfectly pleasant, and it is no longer this drink.

Why It Is Shaken

Nothing calling itself a martini should be shaken, and this one is. The reason is the wine.

A stirred drink is cold and dense and slightly viscous, which suits spirits and fortified wines. A plain white wine stirred goes flat and slightly sullen. Shaking aerates it, lifts the aromatics off the blossom, and produces the light, bright texture the drink is after.

It also chills faster and dilutes more, which a drink carrying this much sweetness needs. Ten seconds is enough. Longer and the wine starts to taste watery rather than crisp.

How to Serve It

Very cold, up, with a lime twist rather than lemon. Lime is sharper and greener and it points at the elderflower; lemon rounds everything off and blurs the line between the blossom and the wine.

It is an aperitif and it behaves like one. Low enough in strength to open an evening, floral enough to suit a warm one, and at its worst as a nightcap, where the sweetness has nowhere to go.

If elderflower is what you want and a Negroni is the shape you want, the Comte de Sureau is the other side of the same bottle: bitter, stirred and considerably more serious.

The Spirit

Gin

A flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.

Learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Left Bank Martini?

Gin, elderflower liqueur and dry white wine, shaken and served up with a lime twist. The white wine stands in for vermouth, which lets the elderflower lead without botanicals arguing with it. Built in 2006 at London’s Cabinet Room.

What wine should I use?

Something crisp, unoaked and cold. Sauvignon Blanc is the classic choice for its acidity and its lack of oak. An oaked Chardonnay puts vanilla and butter against the blossom and the drink turns blowsy almost immediately.

Why is it shaken rather than stirred?

Because of the wine. Stirring leaves plain white wine flat and sullen, while shaking aerates it and lifts the floral aromatics. It also dilutes a little more, which a drink carrying 30ml of sweet liqueur genuinely needs.

Can I use less elderflower liqueur?

You can, and it becomes a different and less interesting drink. The 30ml measure is the design: it was built to showcase the bottle, and the crisp wine is what makes a dose that large survivable rather than cloying.

Master the Techniques

How to Shake a Cocktail Like a Pro

Comte de Sureau

The Comte de Sureau is a Negroni that has been rebalanced rather than merely re-flavoured. Elderflower liqueur takes sweet vermouth's place, and the Campari drops to a quarter measure, which is the change that actually matters. Equal parts would not work. Campari at a full 22.5ml simply erases elderflower, which is a delicate floral note with no capacity to fight back. At 7.5ml it becomes a frame instead of a flood: enough bitter orange to give the drink structure and a dry finish, not enough to bury what the drink is for. The gin leads at 45ml for the same reason. This is a blossom drink that wants a spine, not a bitter drink with a floral accent. It was adapted from a 2007 or 2008 creation by Gonçalo de Sousa Monteiro at Le Lion in Hamburg, the bar that also produced the Gin Basil Smash. Most bars that pour it call it an Elderflower Negroni. The proper name means the Count of Elderflower, which ennobles a hedgerow with an admirably straight face.

Elderflower Collins

The Elderflower Collins is a Tom Collins with the sugar upgraded to blossom. Gin, lemon and soda are unchanged; twenty millilitres of elderflower liqueur stands where the syrup would, and the whole drink reorganises around it. That is the same single move the Gold Rush makes with honey and the Army & Navy makes with orgeat: replace the neutral sweetener with one that brings character. Elderflower's lychee-and-blossom perfume threads through the gin's botanicals and the lemon's bite, and the soda lifts all three. Nobody owns it. It condensed out of the elderflower boom that followed the launch of the best-known liqueur in 2007: bartenders reached for the Collins template as the obvious frame, and the pairing was standard within about five years before anyone thought to claim it. That is folk repertoire of the modern era, which is a real pedigree even without a name attached to it, and it is how most long drinks were arrived at before anybody kept records.

French Martini

The French Martini is a New York drink with a French accent: it emerged in the late 1980s from Keith McNally’s downtown restaurants, Balthazar’s bar making it famous, and it led the charge of the flavoured-martini era with more dignity than most of its followers. Vodka, raspberry liqueur and pineapple juice: three ingredients, no citrus, and a drink that behaves like dessert while drinking like a cocktail. The trick is the pineapple. Shaken hard, fresh pineapple juice throws the silky white foam that crowns the drink, the same protein magic the Jungle Bird relies on, and under it the raspberry liqueur’s black-fruit velvet does the sweetening with royal manners. No citrus is needed because pineapple carries its own acidity: the drink balances on fruit alone. It survived the martini-glass era it helped create because the formula was always sound: rich but not cloying, glamorous but three ingredients deep. Shaken properly cold, foam intact, it remains the best argument the flavoured-martini decade ever made.