The company also runs Dirty Martini Collective, a community page documenting the drink’s cultural moment; part of that world is now their dirty martini chips. The chips started out as an April Fool’s joke. But then, people got angry, so the good folks at Stranger & Sons worked with Kettle Studio to make a salt, vinegar, and dill-flavoured potato chip—only available with Stranger & Sons gin at select stores across Mumbai, Goa, and Karnataka. The collective started as a social page, but they are more interested in what happens beyond it—the drinks, the meet-ups, the experiments, the conversations. “It’s not meant to be a fan club for a cocktail. It’s more about the culture that’s growing around it.”
In Goa, Olson Pereira unexpectedly started a fan club for martini lovers. The beverage consultant and co-founder of Indie Brews and Spirits, recently launched a new vodka called Three Fields. To market it, he organised a one-night-only Three Fields Martini Club. It was a runaway hit, especially among millennials, who downed espresso martinis and green apple martinis and then asked for more. Pereira is busy organising more martini evenings. There’s also a closed WhatsApp group filled with fans of the drink who have attended these events, used to send out event information and content on the drink.
“Martini culture is definitely on the rise,” he says. “People are moving towards simplicity. Consumers have become health-conscious and want to know what’s in their drinks. They want to drink less, drink better, and feel nice.”
Adding to the growing fan club is “new convert” Abhishek Gupta. A produce manager in Bengaluru, his martini journey started with making espresso martinis at a friend’s Halloween party last year, drinking interesting variations (like a fish curry martini and a prawn garum martini), and, most recently, debuting his freezer-door martinis at a party. “It’s light—I can have a few without feeling heavy—and it’s historic. I’m sipping on the same beverage that so many greats have done for more than a century,” he says, adding that his freezer is always stocked with gin so he can make lazy or bone-dry martinis for friends.
A martini party may soon become the next big trend. A close friend hosts martini and dosa parties every week or so because they are “low-effort, high-success”. An espresso Martini is the standard drink at every after-hours session conducted at coffee lab Ruby’s Cafe in Goa. “It is martinis and conversations,” says Divyanshi Patel, Goa brand partner.
At Dhushyant Anil’s house parties—in London or Bengaluru—he is the designated cocktail maker. Friends love his espresso martinis—made using Berunda coffee, a brand he co-founded—and his Indian Martini, a vodka martini with masala chai spices. As the great-grandson of the last ruling Maharaja of Mysore, Anil’s love for gin and martinis is inherited. “My entire family are gin drinkers and love their martinis. My mother loves her vodka martinis,” he says. Interestingly, it was James Bond that actually piqued his interest in cocktails.
Another martini inheritance story belongs to Fay Barretto, who owes her love for the drink to her grandmother Louie Barretto. “She was an ardent fan and always had different types of pickles on hand to put in her drink. I learned a lot from her—about the pickles, vermouth, and why you should keep the bottles in the freezer,” says Louie, an independent consultant and the founder of Mr Bartender and Crew.
The bar story
Martinis are gathering momentum globally and, naturally, in India too. Almost every bar has a signature martini or a special flight or will organise martini-focussed events.
“As a country, we’re finally falling for that clean, boozy kick of the classic,” says Rituparna Banerjee, co-founder, Nutcase Etc in Kolkata. “In the last year, with the rise of intimate bars, you can feel bartenders pouring with more care and precision, swapping the glass halfway through, watching the temperature, treating every pour seriously. You’re seeing classics and modern classics like the Gibson and the Vesper on menus across cities, riffs everywhere, houses making their own vermouths.”
Nutcase Etc. has a flight of mini martinis: dry, wet, perfect and crisp. “A mini lets us explain why you should finish it in three sips, how the drink shifts with time and temperature, and it lets a guest taste a few different styles in one sitting to find the martini that's actually theirs,” she says. They have the classics ready in the freezer—a dry, a perfect, and their version of the dirty martini, and they build to order, especially with the dirty.
Barretto has worked on a martini flight for Scarlett House’s Red Room (on pause for a monsoon menu) in Mumbai—drinks are inspired by Bandra culture and include the signature Bandra Babe made with cashew distillate, kokum, and vodka. In Goa’s Ahilya by the Sea, the Martini Bar has eight drinks made with ingredients from across India.
