French Martini

The French Martini is far-and-away the cocktail we’ve received the most requests to add. Trouble is, there are at least a half-dozen reputable recipes for the French Martini; all contain the same ingredients (vodka, raspberry liqueur, and pineapple juice), but at different ratios.

This is the kind of thing we live for, so we assembled our long-suffering test lab crew and made a flight of French Martinis, at four different ratios based on the most common recipes we dug up. Our favorite ended up being 3:1:3 – 3 parts vodka, 1 part raspberry liqueur, 3 parts pineapple juice. What it lacks in color, it makes up for with superior balance, adequate-but-not-overpowering sweetness, and a wonderful foam cap that other ratios lacked.

Traditionally, French Martinis are made with Chambord, a black raspberry liqueur. Really, any raspberry liqueur is fine – and many recipes call for crème de cassis instead, which is just as delicious and equally as French (which is to say: not very). Another French substitution is cognac for the vodka, which legendary barman Simon Diffords calls for in his “Very French Martini.”