Meet The L.A. Bartender Who Showed Us We Were Enjoying Martinis All Wrong

“Oh man that drink was so good I couldn’t even taste the alcohol,” is not what you want to tell Ryan Wainwright, the bartender of well lauded Terrine restaurant out in Los Angeles.

I could sense Ryan had a fundamental problem with the verbiage folks seem to be use when they describing their cocktails. Don’t get me wrong, Ryan’s not the type to reach across the bar and slap you for showering praise on a cocktail. But his goal in bartending is to make sure the alcohol is accented and not masked. He’s won a shit ton of awards too, stuff like North America’s “Most Imaginative Bartender” and has Los Angeles Magazine listing his martinis as some of the best in Los Angeles.

So dude might know what he’s talking about.

Me, Rudy and Ryan Wainwright cheersing his bomb ass 50/50 Martini cocktail. 

All of this jibber jabber of spirit-forwardness was news to me. I’m usually on the hunt for the closest beer tap or bottle of liquor to be chased by whatever soda is readily available. Yet here I am, degenerate friend Rudy in tow, making drinks with Ryan at his bar during the off hours.

He’s in the middle of making a 50/50 martini, a drink I ignorantly think is gonna be served in some wide-rimmed glass with an olive.

Wrong.

His 50/50 martini has sherry, traditional vermouth, dry vermouth and gin. It’s sweet — it’s tasty, it has layers, and the sherry hits at the end while I get aromas of orange zest from the peel he twists around the rim of the glass. Damn — this dude got me talking about cocktails like I’m penning for some cocktail-of-the-month book club and I’m loving every moment of it.

Thank you Ryan. Thank you for showing me that martinis don’t have to be dry, they don’t have to be vodka, and they don’t have to be savory.

I’ll never tell you that I can’t taste the alcohol ever again: