Posted 3:26 PM by Jason
Spirits of the law.

Interesting post (and accompanying comment thread) on the Volokh Conspiracy today, started by Prof. Volokh himself (at quarter to one on a Monday afternoon), on the topic of spirits.  The ingestible kind, not the ghost story kind.  A statement was attributed to Robert Bork: “a vodka martini isn’t” and we also have a link that contains a letter that Bork wrote to the WSJ on the topic.  All very worth reading.  As for anything original I might have to add, two things.  First, garnishes matter (this on the dispute between lemon peel and olives in martini’s), if you use a cocktail onion in what would otherwise be a martini (and I agree with Bork, go lemon), it becomes a gibson.  This spirit leads to the second point, that a vodka martini isn’t a vodka martini even if you accept the notion of some commenters, that “vodka martini” is acceptable as it is distinguishable name, since such a drink is clearly a kangaroo cocktail (seriously, look it up).  

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