Frozen Martini Bar
A Frozen Martini Bar and a Garnish Table—Including an Olive Tree—Completes This Outdoor Christmas Party.
So, what to do when you have a small apartment and a lingering pandemic, but you want to have a holiday cocktail party? Tent your tiny backyard space and install a frozen Martini bar.
We are lucky to have a lot of people who inspire us. The pandemic normalized outdoor drinking—heck, we’re members of the Polar Bear Martini Club at the Brooklyn bar Tooker Alley, where you drink Martinis in the snow. And frozen bottles of vodka and gin have been on our radar since the days of Sammy’s Roumanian (RIP), and more recently, at the Lobby Bar in the Chelsea Hotel. So, when we decided to host our annual holiday party in a very tight space, we did what any normal couple would do: throw out the couch to make more space for guests and tent the backyard.
Robert decided he wanted a frozen Martini bar out back and I ran with it. I thought of one Christmas long ago when I was in charge of the holiday party at Michael Graves Architecture. I used molds and milk cartons to created hollow rectangular ice boxes that held bottles of wine and liquor. Open-topped ice boxes, if you will. Holly was frozen within the ice and the boxes were back-lit. They were beautiful, kept the wine cold and were cheap (tap water has a low pour cost).
This year—with the frozen bottle of Tanqueray 10 used for the Dukes Martini at the Chelsea Hotel’s Lobby Bar in mind—I froze bottles of gin in a water-filled plastic vinegar bottle, to which I added some pine boughs and holly. Voila! Super cold and festive Martinis!
Robert pre-batched four different Martini variations: a 4:1 gin-vermouth dry Martini; a 50-50 Martini; a Vesper; and a Tuxedo No. 2. We kept the bottled Martinis in the freezer until I was ready to put them in their ice molds. Then it was on to the garnishes.
We let guests choose their own adventure. We had plenty of lemon twists, onions, four kinds of olives and, for a bit of European flair, Gildas (a Spanish snack made of an olive, anchovy and guindilla pepper pierced together, that many like to plop in their Martini for a garnish.) The only thing missing was an olive tree.
What is an olive tree, you say? Back in 2015, I was working on the holiday house tour for the Long Beach Island Garden Club in New Jersey. We decorated houses to raise money for charity and, believe me, the group was quite serious about it and very competitive.
At the house I was working on, we needed something Christmasy on the bar. Of course, trees are the first things you think of when it comes to holiday decorations, but what sort of tree goes on a bar? An olive tree, of course, ready to quickly go into Martini service! I thought such a tree, covered with edible red and green globes, would be perfect. I placed the garnish tree in a trophy cup in place of a Christmas tree stand.
Robert loved the olive tree. Seven years after first seeing it, he suggested I make another one for the frozen Martini bar. You take a styrofoam cone, cover it with something green—this year, I used leaves of romaine lettuce—and put olives on toothpicks all over it.
But the neighborhood craft store only had a narrow styrofoam cone and we had bought giant Queen olives for the tree. So, the result was sort of an olive obelisk. I still loved it. It wasn’t like the original olive tree, but then again, who’s going to see it? Only the people at the party right? Right?
Wait a minute, what’s that on Twitter…..?
Yikes! C’mon guys, you’re going to get me thrown out of the garden club! 😂
Recipe for the Martinis below.
Recipe: Martini Froozie
Yup, it’s a frozen Koozie - I call it a Froozie. Recipe below, with freezing advice from Brian Evans at the Lobby Bar in the Chelsea Hotel.
Make yourself a bottle of pre-batched Martinis and keep it in the freezer. Suggested formula: 12 ounces gin, 4 ounces dry vermouth, 4 ounces distilled water, 8 dashes orange bitters. Adjust as you see fit, depending on how dry or wet a Martini you want.
Put the freezer Martini bottle in an empty plastic bottle with the top part cut off (I used a plastic vinegar bottle). Fill the plastic bottle with cold water. There should be at least a 1/2 to 1 inch of water surrounding the bottle filled with Martinis.
Throw in some holly, pine or berries in the water between the Martini bottle and the plastic bottle.
Freeze to the bottle for 8 to 24 hrs, depending on the amount of water in the plastic bottle.
Just before serving, run the outside of the plastic bottle under warm water to release the Martini bottle and its ice casing from the mold.
Enjoy!
Frozen Martini Bar
Amazing! Would you be willing to share the recipe for the batched Tuxedo #2?
Beautiful and fun!