Your Martini Should Not Be Shaken or Stirred, But Vibrated
Mr. Bond was wrong. The bartender should not shake or stir the cocktail, but vibrate it with a tuning fork. Wayne Curtis of The Atlantic reports:
There’s a theory making the rounds—I first heard it from David Wolowidnyk, who runs the bar at West, a well-regarded Vancouver restaurant—that vibrations of the right frequency will cause the molecules in a drink to rearrange themselves in curious ways, thereby altering or enhancing the flavor. [...]
I tested the tuning fork on a variety of drinks, including Manhattans and daiquiris. Once, on my first sip, I was convinced that a properly tuned Manhattan was tastier and more luminous than a regular one, much as it had seemed in Vancouver. On the second sip, though, I couldn’t detect any difference.
I also tried a series of blind taste tests—putting out three glasses of a spirit, then leaving the room while someone applied a tuning fork to a single glass. I was able to correctly identify which drink had been “tuned” approximately one-third of the time.
(Photo: Richard Mitchell)
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It always makes the flavor better.
By the time the bartender's done, there should be FROST on the outside of the shaker, and it should be so cold he can't hold it without a bar towel.
When he pours it, there should be a haze of Ice-Chips on the top 1/3 of the drink.
Otherwise, like most bartenders, yours will have been an overpaid idiot; triply-so if he dared make a martini in that lamer-combo of Pint Glass+Steel Shaker.