The One Drink and the No-Drink
Caper Diem: Aquavit, Dill, and Caper-Brine Martini
Every home bar has a bottle of aquavit bought for one recipe in 2019. This is the drink that finally gets it off the shelf, and it takes caraway, dill and caper brine seriously enough to be worth the wait.
The parts that change whether this works tonight.
- Makes
- 1 drink
- Time
- Prep 6 minutes
- Equipment
- mixing glass, jigger, bar spoon, fine strainer
- The method
- 7 ingredients · 5 steps
From this recipe’s own yield and timing lines. Nothing here is a guess.
Serve alongside
Cured salmon on rye with dill, or boiled new potatoes with butter and salt. Aquavit, dill, and caper is a Scandinavian lunch reassembled in a glass, and the lunch is still the right answer.
Tools
Mixing glass, jigger, bar spoon, fine strainer. If you take on the throw described below you need a second vessel with some height to it; a large measuring cup works and is easier to aim than a shaker tin. Everything else is a spoon and a cold glass.
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Aquavit (all gin for a juniper-forward version), dry gin, dry vermouth, caper brine (olive brine for something rounder), fresh dill, lemon, caper berries.
Magic
Throw it instead of stirring it. Build over ice in one vessel, then pour the whole thing in a long thin stream into a second vessel held low, and back again, three or four times, straining out the ice on the last pass. The stretched pour aerates without whipping, which opens the caraway in the aquavit and takes the vinegary point off the caper brine in a way stirring never quite manages. It also looks alarming and is very hard to do badly once you have done it once over a sink. Not feeling brave? Stir 25 seconds as written, then let the drink sit one full minute before you hand it over; time does some of the same work.
Gotcha
Open vermouth that has been in a cupboard since spring will ruin this and nothing else in the glass will cover for it. Four ingredients, no sugar, no citrus juice, nowhere for stale wine to hide. Refrigerate it and treat six weeks as the outside limit.
There is a bottle of aquavit in a great many home bars, bought with real enthusiasm for one recipe, used once, and now occupying prime shelf space near the front where it can be seen and felt bad about. It is a genuinely excellent spirit that most people never find a second use for. This is the second use.
Caraway and fennel are already halfway to a savory cocktail before you add anything, which is why caper brine lands here as an integrated idea rather than a provocation. Gin brings juniper and lift. Vermouth keeps it from being cold seasoned liquor. Dill goes on the nose and lemon oil cuts the finish.
Drink details
Prep time: 6 minutes
Makes: 1 drink
Glassware: chilled coupe
Equipment: mixing glass, jigger, bar spoon, fine strainer
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 ounces aquavit
- 3/4 ounce dry gin
- 1/2 ounce fresh dry vermouth
- 1/4 ounce caper brine
- 1 small dill sprig
- 1 wide lemon peel
- 2 caper berries, optional
The pour, drawn to scale
- aquavit1 1/2 ounces50%
- dry gin3/4 ounce25%
- fresh dry vermouth1/2 ounce17%
- caper brine1/4 ounce8%
Building it
- Clap. One sharp slap of the dill between your palms, then into the mixing glass.
- Build. Aquavit, gin, vermouth, caper brine and ice.
- Stir. 25 seconds.
- Strain. Fine-strain into the chilled glass.
- Garnish. Express the lemon peel over the surface. Two caper berries if using.
Clap the dill, do not muddle it
A single clap between the hands ruptures enough of the surface to release the volatile oil and does nothing else. Press it with a muddler and you get chlorophyll, green flecks that survive the strainer, and a vegetal bitterness that reads as grassy rather than herbal. The difference between the two is about two seconds of effort and the entire character of the drink.
Which caper jar
Salt-packed capers give you no brine at all, so this needs the jarred kind in liquid. Those jars range from mildly saline to something closer to pickling vinegar. Start at 1/4 ounce and taste the brine first; if it makes you squint on a spoon, go to a scant teaspoon and let the aquavit carry more of the savory load.
Glass and ice
A coupe from the freezer, and ice that is hard and dry rather than the wet clear-ish cubes that have been sitting in the tray absorbing freezer smells since July. Undiluted, this is a strong drink with a sharp edge; correctly diluted, the same drink tastes rounder and slightly sweet. Almost everything people dislike about savory martinis is a dilution problem wearing a flavor costume.
Batching
For six drinks, combine 9 ounces aquavit, 4 1/2 ounces gin, 3 ounces vermouth, and up to 1 1/2 ounces caper brine. Refrigerate one day. Stir portions with fresh dill and ice at service.
A better move for a dinner party: batch it, add 15 percent water by volume to account for the dilution you would have gotten from stirring, and keep the bottle in the freezer. Then serving is a pour into a cold glass and a lemon peel, and you get to stay at the table. The dill goes in each glass rather than the bottle, since it fades within a few hours.
Without the aquavit
Caraway tea and juniper tea, a nonalcoholic dry vermouth, and the caper brine at the same measure. This is the version I would make for a guest without hesitation, because the drink’s identity lives in the caraway, the dill and the brine rather than in the alcohol, and all three survive intact. Brew both teas strong and chill them hard; a lukewarm base is what makes zero-proof martinis taste thin. Express the lemon peel exactly as you would otherwise.
What to eat with it
Smoked salmon, rye crisps, potato pancakes, pickled vegetables, sharp cheese. It is an aperitif with snack-board instincts, and it will hold its own against anything cured.
When it goes wrong
Too salty. Less brine, more vermouth.
Too herbal. Less dill, or a gentler aquavit; some are heavily dilled to begin with.
Warm finish. Colder glass, harder ice, and stir the full 25 seconds rather than the 15 you actually did.
The final pour
What makes this one work is that nothing in it had to be talked into being here. Caraway, dill, capers, lemon and vermouth already share a shelf in most kitchens and already share a plate at most brunches. Putting them in a coupe is less an invention than an acknowledgment. And the aquavit gets to come down off the shelf.
Part of Drinks & Zero-Proof.
Where this goes next
The next thing you will need.
Cook alongside
Recipe