Shaken or stirred?
Shaking versus stirring is one of the great theological debates surrounding the rite of Martini preparation. The answer, too, is theological: “These are great mysteries.” Martini luminaries have weighed in on both sides of the debate throughout the drink’s history. The two most famous pronouncements have literary sources. Author W. Somerset Maugham declared that “Martinis should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously one on top of the other.” Ian Flemming, speaking through James Bond, required that a Martini be “Shaken, not stirred.” Why not stirred? “It bruises the gin.” (qtd. in Conrad 107; the second Bond quote appears to be apocryphal.min) Maugham’s description of sensuously lounging molecules is certainly a poetic attempt to describe a phenomenon arising from other physical causes, and while we should all defer to the inimitable Mr. Bond on matters such as high-tech spy gadgets, impromptu hand-to-hand combat, and retrograde seduction techniques, his re
