Shaken, not stirred?????

Most of the bars I've been in have been beer joints. The US makes the license for the sale of anything stronger than beer very expensive, so many bars only serve beer, and most Americans can only afford beer joints, where the owners get the cheap, beer license, rent a cheap place to place their bar, and sell beer at a price that normal Americans can afford.

In movies, I've seen tough guys order whiskey or rye. In the US, 'whiskey' means bourbon, a drink that must be made from maize in Kentucky. 'Rye' must, of course, be made with some rye grain.

Some sophisticates order Martinis, but most bars don't have Martinis, only those for the gentry.

So, when Bond said he wanted his Martinis 'shaken, not stirred,' in the movies, most Americans figured the sophisticates always want their Martinis 'shaken, not stirred.' Which is as far from the truth as any movie can go!!

For most drinks, a tough customer orders e,g., whiskey or rye. The spirit is poured into a measure, a small glass with two lines. Generous bartenders fill to the top line. Frugal bartenders fill to the bottom line. Then the spirit is poured into a large glass, and the customer (in an American bar) can ask for any mixer that's on tap at no extra cost.

A Martini is different. The Martini glass must be filled to the brim. Martini glasses vary in size, as do the contents.

In the US, there is a very heavy tax on gin. So a cheap Martini has as little gin as possible. Olives, lemon, and Vermouth take the place of as much of the gin as the bar owners think they can get away with.

The ingredients must be poured into a shaker with ice. If shaken, the contents of the Martini glass will be mostly melted ice, i.e., water. If the ice is made in a commercial ice-maker and is 0F, and the gin and vermouth are 60F, the result is 30F, below freezing, and if the time in the shaker is short, and there is absolutely no shaking, the Martini will be mostly gin and vermouth. Or, if the buyer says so, a spoonful of vermouth is poured into the shaker and then poured out, and the shaker filled with gin. So the contents of the Martini glass is almost 100% ice cold gin. And that's how sophisticated Martini drinkers demand their Martinis: barely stirred, never shaken (shaking 'bruises the gin').

I read the novel by Fleming with the 'shaken, not stirred.' It was NOT a Martini. Cocktails are like hash, some ingredients must always be the same, but hash is different from one diner to the next (hash can be different in the same diner from one meal to the next, but cocktails are usually the same every time in the same bar, since the owners tell the bartenders how each cocktail must be made).

The Martini, as I said, is gin and French vermouth (or an Italian imitation of French vermouth).

In the first Bond book, Bond orders a mixture of 4 shots of gin and one shot of vodka, shaken, not stirred, and poured into a large glass (since, with the large amount of gin, vodka, and melted ice, it would never fit into a Martini glass). The movies then had Bond order an ordinary Martini, served in a normal Martini glass, 'shaken, not stirred,' so it would have been a very weak Martini. And, not knowing anything about Martinis, most Americans thought the rich sophisticates who could afford Martinis always ordered them 'shaken, not stirred'.