The Mistake To Avoid When Adding Blue Cheese-Stuffed Olives To Your Martini

The classic garnish for a martini is a green olive (or three), either plain or pimento-stuffed. Modern mixologists frequently like to put their own spin on things, though, hence martinis garnished with olives stuffed with ingredients ranging from pickles to fig jam. Blue cheese-stuffed olives were once rare in martinis — in the early 2000s, they seemed to have been localized to the Chicago area — but they've since become relatively mainstream. 

Even so, you can't just plunk a blue cheese olive into your drink willy-nilly. Molly Horn, chief mixologist and spirits educator at Total Wine & More, cautions that you need to be mindful of the medium in which the olives are packed. As she advises, "If it's vegetable oil instead of olive oil, as is the case with many of the larger brands, try to avoid using them in your martini." In fact, Horn warns that you should avoid oil-packed olives altogether if you want more of a clean, classic martini flavor.

In her opinion, though, "If you enjoy a little richness in texture and love gazpacho (as I do), the lovely olive-oil-packed blue cheese-stuffed olives will give you a tiny bit of residual briny olive oil that hits the palate every sip." However, restraint is key here, and too much oil will throw off the balance. On this front, she recommends a simple additional step before adding in the olive oil-packed blue cheese olives: "I shake them off aggressively before putting them on a pick and dropping them in the glass."

The classic and clean martini isn't the only drink that can be embellished with a blue cheese-stuffed olive — they're a great enhancement for dirty martinis made savory with the addition of olive brine. Olive oil-packed blue cheese olives also work perfectly in Geoffrey Zakarian's super-smooth martini made with olive oil-infused gin.

Outside the triangular glass, blue cheese olives make a tasty garnish for bloody marys. Add a splash of olive brine to your bloody mary to give the drink a little saltiness, then pile on cocktail picks laden with cubes of other types of cheese and chunks of ham or smoked sausage to make a boozy charcuterie board in a glass.

Speaking of boozy appetizers, you can also make vodka-stuffed olives filled with a combination of blue cheese and alcoholic jelly. Molly Horn endorses hand-stuffing olives with blue cheese, and the secret ingredient of vodka gelatin makes this preparation stand out. These olives are impressive on a standard charcuterie board as well as atop a bloody mary, but you can also serve them as a fun finish to a blue cheese dip.