While others toast the New Year with champagne, have your cohorts hoist Martinis for a far more liberating celebration, and one certain not to be followed with soon-to-be-broken and typically trite resolutions. With total grace, the Martini manages to transform the new morning hour into a time when imbibers feel their best. As Bernard DeVoto wrote for Harper's in 1949, the Martini transforms any time into "the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow again and valor is reborn."

Mixed only with gin, vermouth, and ice, the Martini is an unforgiving cocktail that demands the simplicity of perfection. With no syrups or juices to hide a slip of the hand, the drink's recipe is best approached with top-shelf brands. Booth's, Tanqueray, and Beefeater's all offer a distinctly juniper taste, while Boodles and Bombay Sapphire are less aromatic and lighter in flavor. The latter two have worked well for luring vodka drinkers to the gin fold. A gin that's especially sweet but nearly impossible to find is Boord's Old Tom Gin, a brand suited for guests who typically favor drinks like Lemon Drops and Mai Tais. If you succumb and serve vodka - something The Alchemist certainly wouldn't endorse - opt for brands that aren't cheaper than Smirnoff and don't come in plastic jugs. If your bottle of vermouth is more than a month old, push it to the back of the bar for future occasions when far less exacting drinks will be served. After you do the math for your party, buy several pint-sized bottles of Noilly Prat's dry vermouth and one bottle of Martini & Rossi's sweet vermouth. The day before your guests arrive, put the clear spirits in the freezer, followed by the vermouth several hours later. To keep a bottle of this wine-aperitif fresh after it's opened, store it in the refrigerator.

At this point, survey your mixing space: Unless you have the perfect bar, making several rounds of Martinis presents problems in logistics, since the ice and glassware must also be stored in the freezer. You may need to consider the more time-consuming method of frosting glasses, as well as potential containers and storage places for ice, if your freezer will be filled with liquor. Some bars and restaurants avoid all this by refrigerating pre-made Martinis. Although the drinks are cold, and space and ice are saved, it ruins the drink. "You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there," wrote Mr. DeVoto. "The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest-lived." The Martini should be made efficiently and well, so it can be finished easily before the drink warms.

To keep your mixing flowing smoothly, have Martini menus on hand for the evening. They'll help keep your guests' tastes focused, while showing that there is a variety of traditional Martinis to choose from. The last pre-party preparation to consider is food. Besides being a heavy-hitting aperitif, Martinis are about 50 percent more spirited than cocktails made with citrus juices or syrups. Although most imbibers will stop after only a few Martinis, you should have plenty of hefty hors d'oeuvres, with the promise of more substantial food to follow and the phone number for a taxicab, if need be.

Any party with Martinis can do without decorations, though a few horns and bags of confetti would certainly be appropriate on New Year's. As for the choice of music, we suggest something by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, whose alto sax player, Paul Desmond, relied on good inspiration for his music: "I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry Martini."

When it comes to mixing the dry Martini, be firm when faced with requests for ridiculous proportions. You wouldn't feed your friends rat poison if they asked for it, so don't serve them a bad Martini. Besides, the Alchemist has a fabulous, common-sense tidbit for setting the bounds of mixing even very dry Martinis: At about 1 part vermouth to 8 parts gin, the vermouth flavor is lost. FDR may have merely glanced at his bottle of vermouth, but he also poured onion brine into his Martinis, and William Powell was only acting when he flicked vermouth with an Rx dropper into his Martinis as detective Nick Charles in The Thin Man. Mix dry Martinis with 1 part Noilly Prat dry vermouth to 5 parts gin, and your guests will like them - whether or not they'll actually admit it. But make them Martinis with more than 8 parts gin, and they'll swallow them like shooters just to get them down.

Most guests will enjoy medium Martinis, the equivalent of the now anachronistic "dry" Martini from the '30s. Wet and sweeter Martinis are best served to those unaccustomed to the Martini's distinctive taste. However, don't encourage these imbibers to expect a truly sweet mix. Unlike other cocktails that literally have sweeter and drier versions, the Martini's so-called sweetness is merely measured by the amount and type of vermouth used, and to most imbibers, vermouth isn't that sweet. For guests who claim that the sweet Martini is too medicinal, mix the Martini with a splash of Cointreau or Maraschino, or serve them the Martinez. Whiskey drinkers, who tend to feel left out at Martini gatherings, will appreciate a smoky Martini - a dry Martini with a dash to 1/4 ounce scotch. Guests who fall for gimmicks and paper umbrellas will like the Buckeye Martini (again, the dry Martini, but with a black olive), or a Gibson (a dry Martini with a Spanish onion).

Traditionally, the Martini is garnished with a lemon zest, but somewhere along the line, presumably in the early '50s, olives became more the vogue. Mr. DeVoto, who sipped his Martinis mixed at 3.7 parts gin to 1 part vermouth, reflects on the matter: "I suppose nothing can be done with people who put olives in Martinis, presumably because in some desolate childhood hour someone refused them a dill pickle, and so they go through life lusting for the taste of brine. Something can be done with people who put pickled olives in: strangulation seems best." Interestingly enough, however, threat of strangulation is not nearly as common as danger of injury from the toothpicks in olives. Sherwood Anderson, the Martini's martyr, swallowed the toothpick from his Martini olive and later died of peritonitis. We'd consider this an isolated incident, but the New England Journal of Medicine reported a similar accident on 16 October 1985. According to the publication, a Philadelphia biochemist, who inadvertently swallowed his Martini olive's toothpick while snacking on the fruit, managed to lodge the toothpick up his nose in his efforts to expel the small stick from his stomach. Fortunately, the man survived, but his evening was ruined.

Regardless of the garnish used, remember that much of the Martini's appeal comes from its sophisticated, clean look. Always use clear, 6-ounce cocktail glasses for 4-ounce Martinis, so each drink has a comfortable "collar," or area for sloshing without spills. Never garnish a Martini with more than two olives, or with lemon zests with thick pulps. Specialty or stuffed olives are fine, but they should be small and unassuming. The most important element of a well-made Martini is its coldness. If the glass is sweating by the time you hand it to an imbiber, either the glass or its contents weren't chilled enough. A Martini should be served no warmer than 25°, though one at 20° will be more appreciated.

Getting the drink temperature right the first time will leave more time for you and your guests to contemplate the parallels between people's personalities and the Martinis they drink. J. A. Maxtone Graham's 1968 article in Gourmet is a good start for this discussion: "Two years ago in Chicago an attempt was made to classify tastes in Martinis. A dreadful-sounding machine called a MartiniMatic enabled 3,426 random people to dial a drink of their chosen strength. Marked differences in blend were shown according to professions: teachers, factory workers, and office workers chose 3 to 1; salesmen, buyers, and engineers choose 4 to 1; admen chose 5 to 1; and publishers chose 7 to 1."

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