I've never been big on flavored martinis, unless the flavor is the salty fallout from a buff green olive I've bitten on the toothpick and stirred back into the drink. The citrus-y Bull Market Martini is changing my hard-line stance like a day trader watching his precious pork belly stocks free fall.
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It's being served at the Cinepolis luxury theaters of Dana Point and Ranch Santa Margarita to mark the Christmas Day opening of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, which has been buzzed about as the perfect bookend to Goodfellas and Casino.
When I order a martini, I usually go straight-up with gin, but the Bull Market floods the market with premium gin (Hendrick's) and vodka (Grey Goose). The ultra-smooth French vodka and Scottish gin known for bold hints of juniper, coriander, cucumber and rose petals make a winning base for the drink.
But it's the slight citrus peel flavor that's also infused in Hendrick's that piggybacks onto another Bull Market Martini ingredient: Lillet Blanc, a French aperitif wine composed partly of citrus liqueurs from orange peels. To keep all that vitamin C from giving you a cavity, the martini is served with a lemon twist, so it's at once sweet, sour, bold, complex, buy, sell and …
I'm totally wiped out.
Or at least I would have been had I drained more than one large glass. The great thing about a martini is you can nurse one all night (or a movie's 179-minute running time). That makes it a worthy $13 investment because you lushes would normally order two or seven $9 drinks. Bonus fun comes from keeping your big martini glass full enough to spill a little on the carpet as you make air quotes like Arrested Development's Lucille Bluth.
Please don't tell the fine folks at the spotless Cinepolis that I spilled some martini or propped up a Netflix show.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.