Last night I had TearDrop's classic cocktail of the day, the Inca. It was great--perfectly balanced.

When I got home I decided to make one myself to see how it compared. It turned out pretty good, but not nearly as good as TearDrop's. The ingredients I used were all different: I used a low-end, but very good for $12 gin called New Amsterdam (which is a good choice in gin and tonics, by the way) instead of presumably Plymouth gin (but I'm not sure), Vermouth Di Torino Rosso for my sweet vermouth instead of whatever they used, and Ponti instead of Vya dry vermouth. I also used Fee Brothers orange bitters, but I'm not sure if they used that or house orange bitters. I'm assuming they used house bitters since pretty much all of their bitters are house. The sherry I used was also crappy. See a trend here?

Another notable difference is that they used real, house-made orgeat instead of my crappy Fee Brothers fake orgeat. The orgeat is a key ingredient in this cocktail and many others, so I should really try making my own one of these days.

My homemade drink had an overpowering sweet vermouth taste, so I might try it again with less of that, or with a different brand (I have some Martini & Rossi and some LeJon in the cupboard, so maybe I'll try those, even though neither is exactly high end).

So if you want to make a drink, make it right! But it's also fun to compare the results of your own concoction with those of the pros.

p.s., I can highly recommend using CocktailDB.com for drink recipes. They tend to use the most legitimate recipes. The Inca recipe is the same as the recipe from The Savoy Cocktail Book, which is about as legitimate as you're going to find.

I was at a party a few days ago where someone brought in some ingredients and a recipe for "Oprah's Pomegranate Martini". Now, I'm not going to criticize the quality of the drink itself (not much anyway), since everyone who had one seemed to really like it. Here's the recipe:

• 1 1/2 cups pomegranate juice
• 2 oz. Absolute Citron vodka OR white tequila
• 1 oz. Cointreau liquor
• Cup of ice
• Optional: Splash of sparkling water
• Optional: Squeeze of lemon

Shake ingredients in a shaker and put in chilled martini glasses. Put pomegranate fruit into glass as garnish. Serves 2.

Keeping in mind that "Oprah loves martinis—and this is one of her favorites!", and at the risk of sounding like a pompous drink snob, I can't help but to point out the problems with this "martini."

First, it's not a martini. This is the part that bothers me the most. It's hard to find bars these days that don't bastardize the name martini by calling every cocktail a martini. If I order a martini at any bar that knows anything about making drinks, it should be assumed that I want it made with gin, not vodka. I sure as hell don't want cranberry juice, chocolate, or some other alcohol cover-up added to it. If I did, I would order a bananarama cherry chocolate cocktail or whatever (or maybe some pudding with a little vodka in it). A martini is made with gin, not vodka. If it has vodka substituted for gin, it's a vodka martini. It's fine if you like vodka martinis, but vodka shouldn't be the default spirit used in a standard martini. And if you don't like gin, you should try some good gin in a cocktail made by a good bartender. It's not the same plastic-bottle gin you shot in college. So it should go without saying that this pomegranate concoction is not a martini. In fact, I'm so sure it warrants being called a cocktail.

Second, it uses 1 1/2 cups of pomegranate juice. Even though this is for two people, that's a lot of juice for a cocktail. If we cut the ingredients in half, it's 6 oz of pomegranate juice, 1 oz of tequila or vodka, and 1/2 oz of Cointreau per drink. That's "weak sauce" as they say. Maybe it tastes good, but it's hardly a cocktail when you have a 12:2:1 ratio of juice, primary spirit, and secondary spirit. It's definitely not a martini.

Third, what kind of drink allows you to substitute tequila for citrus vodka? Sorry, but that's two different drinks (neither of which are martinis!).

It's clear to me that Oprah doesn't actually love martinis. You can't love something when you don't even know what it is. She doesn't even love cocktails. She just likes a little bit of alcohol to go with her juice.