I’m not someone who believes a martini should come easy. For starters, it’s not quite ABV appropriate as an everyday tipple. But a large part of my reasoning revolves around the small, ridiculous theater that makes. Sourcing the olives and vermouth, the spirit staying forever in the freezer (top-shelf vodka or bust, in my experience), pre-chilling the glass (crucial) and carefully recreating the mix. It’s a real pleasure to create something so exquisitely lethal and unnecessary.
Maybe wait until you’ve downed a martini or two before you browse Handmade martini glasses from Maison Balzac. In my experience, any hesitation involved in splashing on one practically disappears.
I’m not going to sugar-coat things here. At £60 per glass, it’s impossible to make a case for this as a sensible buy. But just look at it! In it is a small green glass olive – this is the glass that deserves a good martini.
Maison Balzac is very good at this particular type of luxury. Founded in Australia by French-born Alice Pioch Balzac, the brand began with perfumed candles and has since grown into a gorgeously whimsical universe of hand-blown glassware, trompe l’oeil linens, colorful plates and objects designed to make life more beautiful.
The brand calls its martini glasses ‘jewellery for the table’, which is exactly the kind of phrase I’d normally roll my eyes at, but in this case might be too apt to dismiss it. Handcrafted from borosilicate glass, it is clear except for the star logo of the Maison Balzac at the base, except for the opaque green olive at the base. As with most of the brand’s hand-blown glassware, slight variations in shape, size and color are all part of the charm.
The level of extravagant craftsmanship on display is, I think, the whole point of our ‘Little Luxury’ range. The fact is that something can turn a habit into something you look forward to (see: Our lifestyle director’s favorite butter dish), or something that gets you a little more excited to do something you already love to do. And this, conveniently, is where the price makes some sense. That’s not a decent fee for a glass by any means, but given that it makes a homemade martini look as appealing as a dukes, I think it’s worth it.
