The Spirits: shake up the romantic in you with a Martini

Contrary to the popular myth, Valentine’s Day was not named after a lovelorn saint. Nor was it invented by the greetings card industry, like birthdays or Hanukkah. It was, in fact, dreamt up by a secretive coterie of hedge-fund managers at the 1986 World Economic Forum.

If this most unpredictable of human feeling were only rationalised a little, they contended as they sipped their pina coladas in a Davos conference suite, surely it would be subject to supply and demand like any other commodity? And if it were a commodity, why should it not be traded, like copper, or chutney? And wouldn’t this, short of devaluing love, liberate it? They were romantics, in their way.

Since they still needed to win over the sceptics, their marketing people came up with Valentine’s Day, an annual festival designed to link love and commerce in the hearts and minds of the populace. Then all they needed to do was sponsor a historical massacre and secretly fund the career of My Bloody Valentine, and they had a PR phenomenon.

So you may think you are being romantic, travelling home on the Tube with your M&S Dine-In for Two meal. You may think you are being original, with your Ryan Gosling-themed treasure hunt. But somewhere in a glass tower on Wall Street, they are optioning your imagination and short-selling your lust. The only sensible option is to pour yourself and your lover a glass of something strong.

Romantic drinking usually takes the form of champagne, but I would argue that, since champagne is like cider with marketing, you are simply falling into the trap. A similar rule applies to any cocktail specifically devised for Valentine’s Day. Only if you uncouple yourself from received conventions can you liberate your love.

One of the most authentically romantic cocktails — sweet, seductive and slightly filthy — is Les Fleurs du Mal, which features in Tony Conigliaro’s recent book Drinks (Ebury Press). It is named in honour of Charles Baudelaire, who once wrote a very loving poem about a rotting carcass, and it consists of 50ml rose vodka, 25ml lemon juice, 25ml egg white, shaken up with a dash of absinthe.

The easiest way to try it is to order one at the Zetter Townhouse in Clerkenwell — but since it is Valentine’s Day today, you probably won’t get a table there. You could make one at home but if you follow Conigliaro’s rose vodka recipe you’ll need to track down some tuberose hydrosol. Either way, your spontaneity reserves will be exhausted, and you’ll be looking at market collapse.

Or take inspiration from one of the most romantic cocktail scenes in film, which occurs in the 1934 screwball comedy The Thin Man, which starred William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nora and Nick Charles, a debonair husband-and-wife detective duo. The film opens with Nora meeting Nick in a bar, ordering a Martini and asking how many he has had. This will make it six, he replies. “All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis?” she asks the waiter. Now that’s commitment.