How to Make the Gin Cocktail With Vermouth

The Martinez is the missing link. The halfway point. It is both stylistically and chronologically a middle child, a cocktail that falls comfortably into the category of “forgotten classic,” which is kind of a hilarious understatement considering how famous its siblings have become.

The timeline goes like this: American bartenders get their hands on vermouth in the 1870s or so. The Manhattan is invented soon after, which is whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters. Then a few years later we get our first glimpse of the Martinez—“Same as Manhattan, only you substitute gin for whiskey,” writes O.H. Byron in The Modern Bartender’s Guide in 1884—so it’s sweet vermouth and bitters again, but this time with gin and a touch of liqueur. Then later comes the Martini, gin again, but with the sweeter Italian vermouth replaced with French (“Dry”) vermouth. So it is. Simple, right?

Zoomed out, yes. Like all evolutionary timelines, at a far enough distance it is clear where the distinct stops are along the way, and everyone agrees on the order of their invention and their broad-strokes identities. A Martinez is halfway between a Manhattan and a Martini.

When you zoom in, though, it’s an enormous mess— at the time, these delineations, especially between Martini and Martinez, would’ve been so fluid as to be totally meaningless. The gin, for example, would’ve initially been the malty, white whiskey-type from Holland (called “genever”) in subsequent books you’ll find genever, Old Tom Gin, and London Dry Gin interchangeably. Then there’s the vermouth: A Martinez uses sweet vermouth, which is uncontroversially true, but what of the two-decade period in the 1920s and ‘30s where multiple recipe books explicitly call for dry vermouth, making the Martinez just a Martini with a little bit of sweetness. And what sweetness—curaçao, maraschino liqueur, or gum syrup? Sometimes what is obviously a Martinez was called a Martini (or, just to be annoying, “Martine” or “Martigny” etc etc). It’s a game of telephone stretching 60 years, a rat’s nest to disentangle that is, as a bonus, also tedious and ultimately irrelevant. To quote no less an authority than David Wondrich in his genre-defining cocktail history book Imbibe: “It really doesn’t matter—the way mixology was practiced in the Gilded Age, to try one combination was to try them all.”

The Martinez, then, is a unique cocktail only in hindsight. It is an evolutionary step toward what we now know as a Martini, but in the fullness of time we have come to see as distinct and delicious enough to warrant its own identity—that you may have never heard of it is not an indictment of its quality, just of the curse of being the middle child between absurdly famous brothers. Properly constructed, a Martinez is plush with Italian vermouth but still prickly with gin, enjoying the diamond-clarity of a Martini but with the silken luxuriousness of a Manhattan. More than the Martini or the Manhattan, the Martinez evokes that Gilded Age, an echo of a long past era reflected in the quantity of vermouth and the unusual character of maraschino. I always find myself craving one around Springtime, when it’s somehow both warm and cold simultaneously and you have no idea how to dress yourself, and when the in-between things feel just right.

Martinez

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon peel.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Gin: If you have a bottle of Old Tom Gin around, now is the time to use it. Hayman’s and Ransom are very different, but each makes a stellar Martinez. As you likely don’t, unless you’re a big cocktail fan, I’m not sure I’d recommend buying a bottle just for this—the increased richness of the Old Tom was much welcome, but not so much better than Tanqueray or Tanqueray 10 or Monkey 47 or Hendrick’s to warrant a trip to the store.

Sweet Vermouth: This is the big choice and will have the biggest impact on your final product. Personally, this is where I think something like Dolin Sweet Vermouth really shines. It’s lighter and leaner in style and helps keep sweetness in check. For me, a Martinez is at its best when the vermouth forms roughly half the volume of the drink but doesn’t overwhelm with sweetness. I thought Carpano Antica was good too, but perhaps a little too powerful for this purpose.

See Also

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Maraschino Liqueur: Used a quarter ounce at a time, this will bring a fun and necessary accent mark to the experience. Luxardo is the flagship brand, but it’s used in such small quantities, really any maraschino you can find will be great.

Orange Bitters: Be sparing. I missed these when they weren’t there, but you still want a light touch—one dash will do it. As for brands, honestly get whatever you can get. No one brand of orange bitters stands so tall over the others that it’s worth a special trip for (I wish it weren’t so, but alas), so here’s my advice: In a perfect world, for this particular drink, I’d use the floral Odessa orange bitters for Bitter Queens for its orange and chamomile notes. In the real world, use whatever you’ve got.