Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd US president, was at his best after a stiff drink, which explains why he carried a “martini kit” on every local and foreign trip, including his martini tray. His favorite was the Dirty Martini: two parts gin, one part vermouth, a soupcon of olive brine, a lemon twist and an olive, and sometimes a couple of drops of anisette, At the end of every working day, FDR used to invite his staff to the Oval Office for what he called “the Children’s Hour”: he rolled up his sleeves and started mixing Martinis, using his beautiful silver shaker, still on display in the museum dedicated to him in Washington,
Three anedocts.
At the Tehran Peace Conference in 1943, at the height of World War II, Roosevelt prepared a martini for Stalin, stressing the importance of the lemon zest for the success of the cocktail. Stalin found the drink cold in the stomach but pleasant, and the next day he gave Roosevelt a lemon tree from his native Georgia with more than two hundred lemons.
In the summer of 1939, when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited FDR at Hyde Park, a few weeks before the Second World War began, the president said “My mother does not approve cocktails and thinks you should have a cup of tea.” The King said, “Neither does my mother”, and they had a couple of rounds of Martinis.
In 1933, after signing the law that ended Prohibition, he put down his pen, and said: “What the nation needs now is a drink.” And he mixed a Martini.
The Martini Hour 