BOTTOMS UP: Are you ready for your "All Greek Martini"?
This fine Athenian winter's libation leans on locally sourced ingredients...cheers!
Perhaps you’ve got nothing more to celebrate than the fact that Santorini’s volcano hasn’t erupted — but that’s as good a reason as any to sip a newfangled twist on a classic libation, is it not?
There are few better backdrops to the fading days of a long winter than the Acropolis. That’s what you see from the rooftop bar of the Athens Capital hotel, one of the best hotels in the busy Greek capital.
There are plenty of award-winning bars at Athens, and recently I even read about one that makes a concoction that involves slipping a slice of craft bacon into a martini glass. Many of those watering holes are at ground level, though. In Manhattan you want that skyline view if you can get it, and in the Greek capital one sometimes needs the Parthenon to remind you where you are in the unlikely — well, actually pretty likely — event of temporary tipsiness.
From this urbane aerie the columns of that great pagan temple to the city’s eternal protector, Athena, gleam like the pillars of a shared but ever-changing dream. It is a kind of turbocharged beauty that demands inattention if one is to focus on catching up with the news of a friend. Enter the All Greek Martini. How is one to resist a “journey through Greek mythology” carried on the winds of “Stray Dog Wild Gin, Majuni, Mastiha, and orange bitters”?
Certainly, I could not resist the menu’s turgent description of this liquid all-star, which “pays homage to Greece’s rugged terrain” with an infusion of “Majuni, a nectar said to be bestowed upon mortals by Dionysus, and mastiha, revered since antiquity for its mystical properties.” Because “legend has it that mastiha, derived from the sap of the mastic tree, symbolizes renewal, while Majuni evokes the golden fields of Attica, where Dionysus held court over ecstatic celebrations.” In other words, where Dionysus got hammered.
However, this crafty Grecian beverage is more nuanced than that. The orange bitters are “sourced from Greece’s sundrenched orchards” and provide balance as each sip “unveils a new chapter in the saga of this ancient land.”
I would love to see ChatGPT generate better than the foregoing.
Needless to say, the $22 elixir is accompanied by nuts and a tray of plump and tangy green almond-stuffed Kalamata olives.
My bar companion nursed a slightly less pricey Hibiscus Sparkle, which involved Pommery Champagne, hibiscus flower essence, and homemade sirop de rose. The radiant sparkler is “fashioned with a finesse worthy of the divine,” but the hibiscus essence did recall the top notes of a Kir Royale, and one does not always want memories of Paris to intrude.
While the All Greek Martini wins as summer’s best cocktail, special mention must be made of a favorite non-alcoholic find, and that is a fine artisanal orange ginger ale made by the Corfu Beer company. It is an unusual mixture and quite refreshing, and makes a perfect, family-friendly accompaniment to late summer fare like gazpacho or Roman-style pizza al taglio.
For those who find that even a little ginger goes too long a way, they also make a nice pink grapefruit and bergamot soda, as well as a beer and lemon “Radler” with just 2 percent alcohol. Might Jennifer Aniston have been enjoying a Radler or two at a trendy bar in Corfu recently?
No doubt, though, if Trader Joe’s could find a way to stock some of the Corfiot company’s fizzy Royal Ionian range, it would not remain on the shelves for long.