The Story of Martini

The Story of Martini
As modern mixed drinks go, the martini is pretty old. It probably originated as the Martinez, which was invented in San Francisco during the wild Gold Rush years by a celebrated local bartender named Jerry Thomas.

Purists who advocate a dry martini take note: Thomas’s recipe was anything but dry. It consisted of four parts vermouth to one part Old Tom (sweet gin) – practically a mirror opposite of today’s drink and it also sported a dash of bitters and two dashes of maraschino liqueur in addition to the vermouth.

By the 1920s, the Martinez had become the martini, but even a “standard” martini, 1920s-style, went pretty heavy on the vermouth: four parts gin to one part vermouth.

And if the opinion of literary scholar Bernard DeVoto is given credence, the standard had not changed much by 1949.

In that year, DeVoto published a classic essay on the martini in Harper’s, decreeing the perfect ratio as 3.7 parts gin to 1 part vermouth.

Even in the 1940s – and one suspects, earlier as well – there were champions of the truly dry martini.

Gin to vermouth rations of 12 to 1 and 20 to 1 were proposed. Sir Winston Churchill, who had strong opinions about everything from how best to deal with Herr Hitler to the proper placement of prepositions, believed that a dry martini should be prepared by merely casting a glance toward an unopened bottle of vermouth while pouring the gin into the mixing glass.

And speaking of mixing, there is the controversy over whether the drink should be stirred or shaken. Agent 007, of course has always insisted on having his martini “shaken, not stirred.”
The Story of Martini