Last week, Michael Ruhlman tweeted the following in a cocktail purist thread revolving around the degradation of the taxonomy of mixology:

i will give entire set of my books to person who creates a name for “martini” made with vodka that actually becomes commonplace

My first impulse was to brainstorm names with appendix (appendage?) “tini”. None of them very clever or likely to catch on, even as a scarcastic tag for vodka “martinis”: Fauxtini, Lametini into the progression Mediocratini, Medivodkatini, Medivodkratini.

That was going nowhere, so I posted Ruhlman’s tweet to my Facebook wall and flagged a friend who takes his amateur mixology seriously. His thoughtful response:

First the problem and then the suggestion. The problem is that martini now refers to the glass as well as the drink. Just like there is an “old fashioned” or “highball” glass there is now a martini glass. Vodka cocktails, however, usually have one thing in common – sweetness. For example, apple martinis and cosmopolitans have a sugar component. My suggestion is to call them a “Doux” which is the French term to describe a very sweet champagne. Maybe someday we will all order an Apple Doux or a Chocolate Doux. Imagine the pretension.

I thought that Doux had about as much chance as elbowing aside the degraded meaning of ‘martini’ as I did of being tapped as the next judge on American Idol. But I thought he was on to something in pointing out that the problem wasn’t just the expansion and degradation of what the word Martini meant. The problem was that Cocktail glasses were now called Martini glasses. A quick look at what passes for “Specialty Martinis” shows that many don’t contain gin, vodka or vermouth at all. As the conversation continued I thought of all the drinks that are traditionally served in a cocktail glass, Martini, Manhattan, Cosmopolitan, etc and thought about how it was the Martini that had been tagged it “It”.

Then I realized the answer was staring me right in the face. We already had a vodka drink that is traditionally served in a cocktail glass and it has a name. A Cosmopolitan. And in fact, all those Chocolatinis and Appletinis were in fact Chocolate Cosmos and Apple Cosmos. So why isn’t that what they are called?

I would suggest the intersection of the history and onomatopoeia (something resembling onomatopoeia that I don’t know the word for.)

First history. If I remember correctly, it was in the 90′s that saw the rise of the specialty ‘martini’. Bartenders had to solve the problem of making drinks that had an air of sophistication for people who didn’t like martinis. A grown up version of a Shirley Temple that didn’t call attention to the customer’s lack of worldiness. Owing to the fact that Sex and the City hadn’t been invented yet, the Cosmopolitan didn’t have the cachet for the task. Martini has always been the universal cocktail of panache and sophisication. Thus the Martini was shanghaied into lending its reputation to a endless parade Screwdrivers swanning around in evening gowns.

The good news for the task at hand is that Sex and the City has been invented and people who don’t like Martinis are quite proud to sidle up to the bar and ask for a Cosmo.

The second and stickier problem is language. Lashing the appendix ‘tini’ onto anything that pours is just too easy and the result may be all too pleasingly whimsical to derail this annoying juggernaut.

Is it too late to get the toothpaste back in the tube? Maybe. But if we have some motivation and patience, I think there is hope. The fact is there are a handful of influential bartenders/mixologists in the world and as a group they are far more protective of the concept of a Martini than the concept of a Cosmopolitan. (Serious bartender tend to view vodka the way chefs look at chicken breast) Most of what passes for a Vodka Martini is in fact a variation on a Cosmo not a Martini. It seems if we could engage a handful of movers and shakers to push specialty Cosmos in place of specialty Martinis, we will have won the lions share of the battle. (I would venture that between Ruhlman and his cronies Bourdain, Symon, et al. they can get the ear of enough of them to get the ball rolling.)  The downside is that it will take a decade to trickle down to your neighborhood Regal Beagle. And we will likely have to concede the ground occupied by a cocktail glass filled with vodka, vermouth and an olive (or god forbid a twist) and allow that to remain known as Vodka Martini* (perhaps with a signing statement). A Dry Cosmo has potential on that front, though I think the inertia is formidable. But sakes alive man, the Martini survived Ian Fleming, and the legitimacy of the Vodka Gimlet has been accepted for half a century. Let us grit our teeth; mumble something about bending and breaking, the perfect and the good; and sally forth!

The good fight awaits.

*I don’t know if this caveat disqualifies me for the set of books, but I’m care more about the big picture. And by the time it plays out, I will likely have the complete set anyway.