The Sierra Madre Martini is a tequila riff on a classic that’s perfect to raise in toast to the inevitable end of the world.
You’ll need
- 2.50 oz (75ml) tequila reposado
- .50 oz (15ml) sweet red vermouth
- 2 dashes chocolate bitters
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir thoroughly to chill. Strain into your vessel. Serve!
“…a surprisingly strong, restorative, and disgusting drink.”
In-game description of the Sierra Madre Martini.
Fallout: New Vegas’ Dead Money had it all: a fascinating story, a mysterious location, engaging companions—even a lesson about greed. And, of course, a wonderfully named drink with a truly disgusting ingredient list: the Sierra Madre Martini.
When something has ‘martini’ in the name, it immediately makes it to the top of my list of drinks to bring into the real world. But as much as I’d like to try and choke down a slurry of poison gas and potato chips on camera (the only ingredients listed by its creator, Dean Domino), I decided instead to recreate the spirit of the drink rather than combine the ingredients laid out in the game.
To do that, there’s a bit of a spiritual journey ahead of us.
If you liked this, you’ll like my take on Nuka Cola from the Fallout franchise as well.
First, we’ve got the style of the cocktail: a martini. There’s a lot of debate about what makes a ‘good’ martini, particularly around the ratio of vermouth to base spirit. Modern martinis are notoriously dry, with a common refrain being a martini should be made with gin and a brief glance at a nearby bottle of vermouth.
This wasn’t always the case though; back in the 1950s from which the Fallout universe takes a lot of its inspiration, martinis were a lot heavier on the vermouth—and any drink from the Sierra Madre would probably be similarly proportioned. Old recipe books from that era use anything from a 3:1 ratio of spirit to vermouth to a 6:1 ratio. I’ve gone with a happy medium with 5:1 (which also happens to be my preferred ratio too!). Historical authenticity never tasted so good.
Second, we’ve got the use of chocolate bitters. Using bitters also fell out of vogue as time went on, but it was again a traditional part of old-style martinis. The method is starting to make a comeback, and I’m helping it along by using it in this recipe.
Finally, we get into the use of tequila and sweet red vermouth. Martinis are traditionally made with gin (with vodka coming later), but I think you can use any base spirit you like. It’s the ratio that matters. We’re using a tequila reposado or anejo here for added smokiness. It feels right that a drink named after the Sierra Madre should have a Mexican spirit as a base.
Meanwhile, the sweet red vermouth provides a sweeter but still savoury flavour and gets us closer to that reddish-brown colour that the Sierra Madre Martini has in-game.
If you’re feeling particularly extra, you can rim the glass with crushed potato chips as a nod to the in-game recipe using ‘junk food’ (which seems to be chips, according to the in-game art). I recommend ready salted chips and using lime juice to hold them onto the vessel—it may seem weird, but the salt and lime pair surprisingly well with the tequila.
Phew, fair amount of background to this one, but all that work pays off. The real-life Sierra Madre Martini is a faithful recreation of the spirit of the original in-game drink, but with a fair few tweaks to the original recipe to make it actually enjoyable. It’s smoky, it’s strong, it’s a little bit sweet—quite a departure from the traditional gin martini, but just as easy to raise in toast to another successful gold heist.
Cheers!
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