Observe Dry January The Right Way — With A Dry Martini

Gin, gin, and more gin. (Photo by me)

Labor Day through about mid-December is what I like to call Open Season on food and drink writers. For more than three months, publicists try to kill us with endless tastings, events, parties, dinners and trips, several nights a week with scarcely a pause to let us actually write about the products they’re promoting, let alone to give us any time to physically recover from the nonstop bacchanal. As the great drinks writer Kara Newman put it, we’re human foie gras.

This year, I made the mistake of having my annual physical on January 2nd. “This will be a baseline of awfulness,” I told her. “It definitely won’t get any worse from here.” Sure enough, my bloodwork revealed some mildly alarming numbers, though I seem to have been more alarmed than my doctor, who suspects I will bounce back somewhat now that I’m not overeating and boozing it up 4-5 nights a week.

Based on my particular lifestyle, I may seem like the perfect advocate for Dry January, the 31-day respite from booze that many of us both in and out of the drinks biz have adopted in recent years. Certainly I’m drinking less this month than the previous four, primarily because new releases have slowed down and there aren’t a lot of events to attend. But that doesn’t mean I’m going entirely boozeless for the month. I am not a fan of the zero-proof cocktails at bars that are now creeping towards $20 (at least in NYC), nor am I a fan of alcohol-free “spirits” that are essentially very fancy flavored water, and which sell for up to $40 a bottle — more than Evan Williams bourbon or Rittenhouse Rye, to name two. When I’m not drinking alcohol, I generally prefer a $1.50 can of Diet Coke or club soda, or free water from the tap, not something that kinda sorta evokes an alcoholic beverage, both in flavor and price.

So I’ve decided to go in another direction. I drink in moderation, but I drink well — and for Dry January, I’m sticking, for the most part, to dry martinis. It’s a great excuse to start writing about the mountains of gin I have lying around the house, and which get used as frequently at Chez Sachs as most of my whiskeys or rums, at least for recreational purposes. In my latest for the good folks at Forbes, I highlight eight gins, at least a few of which you’re probably unfamiliar with, from around the globe that make a damn fine dry martini. And by “dry” I don’t mean “dirty” — you won’t find any olive brine in my ‘tinis. For all the delicious details, click the link (which is right -> HERE <-) and get your mixing glass and stirrer handy!