I was in a bar in Big Bear, CA the first time I had a martini. I was 25 at the time and had never ordered a mixed drink from a bartender. Like playing a table game at a casino, ordering a mixed drink can be intimidating because they’ll ask you all sorts of questions you aren’t initially prepared to answer: “Straight up? On the rocks? Shaken? Stirred? Olives? Twist?”

It was a poorly made martini. It would be another 10 years before I had my second. I’ve since learned that a poorly made martini tastes like gasoline, but a well-made martini tastes like ethanol…smooth, high-octane ethanol.

I think of the martini as the most masculine and sophisticated mix drink out there. It’s not at all sweet or cute, aside from the girlish glasses in which they’re often served. It’s the drink of statesmen, favored by both FDR and Winston Churchill, and by mid-century men in grey flannel suits.

What I love about martinis is what just one will do for you. Especially in the summer, when it stays light late into the evening, a martini cools you down and warms you up at the same time.

As H.L. Mencken once said, the martini was “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.”