Martinez Origin?

Martinis were originally made with gin and sweet vermouth. Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, James Bond, and a marketing campaign by the Smirnoff Company changed everything!

The Martinez Cocktail is the most likely origin of the martini as we know them today. It was a mixture of equal parts gin and sweet vermouth with a few dashes of orange bitters and Maraschino Liqueur. It was stirred and chilled with hand cut ice and strained into a cocktail glass.

Martinez today is an actual town outside San Francisco. It was a pop-up gold rush settlement during the 1850’s to civil war era. The legend states the Martinez Cocktail was created for a gentleman who traveled to Martinez by Jerry Thomas, who authored one of the first Bar-tender’s guides in the 1860’s. “Professor” Thomas, as he was often referred, traveled the United States, and was head barman at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco at the creation of the Martinez Cocktail. The original recipe called for two parts sweet vermouth to one part gin. The gin back then wasn’t always of best quality, so they had to sweeten everything to make drinks palatable.

The recipe for the Martinez we use at the restaurant calls for two parts Old Tom Gin to one part sweet vermouth with an equal dashing of Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur and orange bitters. We chill it and serve it up. We make the recipe authentic with an Old Tom Gin from Ransom Distillery in Oregon. This particular gin would be similar to one that would be drunk in Manhattan during the Civil War. This style is often dark in color from malting the grains it is distilled from. It would be also stored in oak barrels for transport. They would ship most sprits in the 19th century in oak cask—bottles were expensive to produce and would often break during transport.
An interesting evolution of how America stumbled to the vodka martini with dry vermouth—vodka was almost non-existent in America before WWII!