Occasionally, after a long day of walking the halls of Baselworld, nothing hits the spot like a chilled, dry, dirty martini. Unfortunately ? Switzerland being more of a wine-and-beer country than a cocktail one ? a good one can be hard to come by unless you?re at a high-end, international-style hotel, where the bartenders are fluent in classic American mixology. Fortunately, at this year’s Baselworld back in March, Seiko provided a haven for weary (and thirsty) watch journalists and retailers right in its booth ? an honest-to-gosh cocktail bar with a Japanese bartender, mixing three specialty drinks for guests. The bar setting ? and the chosen drinks ? were not random, but inspired by new models in Seiko?s recently introduced and already extraordinarily successful Presage collection, whose dazzling dial colors, Seiko says, are inspired by classic cocktails.
Of the eight new “Cocktail Time” Presage watches, which also include a mocha-brown “Manhattan” dial and a cream-colored “Margarita” dial, I had a chance to spend several weeks with the ?Martini? model, aka Ref. SRPB43, the one with the shimmering, silvery blue, sunray-textured dial ? which does, I must admit, evoke the sensation of gazing straight down into a full martini glass ? sans olive or lemon peel, of course. According to Seiko, each dial receives seven layers of a gloss finish to achieve its attractively light-reflecting surface. The watch has an elegantly simple three-h...