Martini’s
Murky History
Few cocktails have acquired as much myth as the martini. Its lineage threads through 19th-century American bar manuals, the arrival of Italian and French vermouths, Prohibition’s dry aesthetic, interwar codification in London, and a post-war pivot toward vodka. Separating romance from record requires reading the primary sources, Bartenders’ Guides, hotel manuals, and contemporaneous advertisements, then contextualizing them with credible secondary scholarship. What follows is a concise, source-driven history of how the martini moved from bittersweet antecedents to its spare, modern form.
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From Fancy Cocktails to the Martinez
When American bartending first coalesced in print, a “cocktail” meant base spirit, bitters, sugar, and citrus oil. Jerry Thomas’s 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide codified this structure (e.g., the Fancy Gin Cocktail), though not yet the dry gin–vermouth mix we now call a martini. Thomas’s 1887 enlarged edition, however, includes a Martinez Cocktail, Old Tom gin, sweet (Italian) vermouth, maraschino and bitters; widely regarded as a close progenitor. Transcriptions of the Thomas Martinez formula appear in modern summaries and scholarly write-ups, with ingredient quantities matching those later quoted other works.
O.H. Byron’s The Modern Bartender’s Guide (1884) independently documents the Martinez, reinforcing that, by the mid-1880s, an aromatic, sweet gin-vermouth cocktail was already in circulation.
Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual (1888) is equally important: it prints a “Martini Cocktail” (Old Tom gin, vermouth, curaçao, bitters, and gum), showing the name “Martini” in print before the drink had shed its sweetness and liqueurs. Johnson’s book positions the Martini as a sibling to the Martinez rather than a discrete, dry departure.
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French Vermouth and “Dry” by Name
At the turn of the century recipes begin to slim. The Marguerite, first cited in early-1900s collections and firmly documented by 1904, mixes Plymouth dry gin with dry (French) vermouth and orange bitters, looking very much like an early dry martini in everything but name.
By 1907, San Francisco barman William Boothby prints what may be the earliest “Dry Martini Cocktail” by that name: half jigger dry English gin, half jigger French vermouth, plus orange bitters; attributed to Charlie Shaw of Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, vermouth culture was exploding. Martini & Rossi had marketed rosso vermouth since 1863, and launched Extra Dry on New Year’s Day 1900, a product milestone that dovetails with American menus turning from Italian (sweet) to French (dry) styles in “martini” service.
Technique, Ratios, and Orange Bitters
By 1922 the martini’s “recognizable form” (London Dry gin with dry vermouth, typically around 2:1, often with a dash of bitters) was conventional, and the garnish had settled into olive or lemon twist.
Harry Craddock’s 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book anchors the interwar archetype: 2/3 gin, 1/3 French vermouth, plus a dash of orange bitters, strained into a stemmed cocktail glass with olive or lemon peel. That bitters note, nearly extinct in late-20th-century spec, was then standard.
Prohibition (1920–1933) ironically popularized the martini: gin was easy to produce illicitly and the “drier” serve masked less-refined distillate; after repeal, abundance of quality London Dry reinforced a progressively drier palate across the 1930s–40s.
A separate, savory branch appears in print. G.F. Steele’s 1930s My New Cocktail Book includes a “Perfect (à la Hyland)” calling for olive brine; a textual ancestor of today’s Dirty Martini (brine added), even if the “dirty” name arrives later.
Jerry Thomas’s 1862 "Bar-Tender’s Guide"
Knickerbocker Hotel
Who invented it?
West Coast plaques and bar legends variously credit San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel or the town of Martinez, California; East Coast lore points to New York’s Knickerbocker Hotel. The best we can say, chronologically, is that print evidence for Martinez/Martini recipes predates the Knickerbocker’s heyday (opened 1906), rendering that hotel-invention claim anachronistic.
The oft-repeated Knickerbocker story that bartender Martini di Arma di Taggia inventing the dry martini for magnates in the 1910s is best treated as hotel legend: the drink, by that time, already existed in print.
Ever Drier. Vodka Arrives
Throughout the mid-20th century the vermouth fraction shrinks: 3:1 in the 1930s, 4:1 in the 1940s, and by the latter 20th century 5:1 or 6:1 was commonplace, with even more arid outliers like the whimsical “Montgomery” (15:1).
Vodka pivots into American cocktail culture on the back of aggressive marketing; Smirnoff’s “It leaves you breathless” campaign of the 1950s–60s explicitly sold vodka’s “no smell” advantage; fertile ground for the vodka martini.
The martini’s most famous literary variant, the Vesper, appears in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (1953): “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet … shake very well … lemon peel.” It is not a classic martini (no vermouth), but it cemented vodka’s place in the martini conversation and popularized “shaken, not stirred.”
Dirty, Dessert, and Decline to Revival
By the 1970s–80s, two paths diverged. On one, steakhouse martinis grew bone-dry and oversized, sometimes on the rocks. On the other, sweet, colorful “-tini” drinks, Appletinis, Lemon Drops, borrowed the glass more than the recipe. Industry writers chronicle these shifts and their cultural contexts. The Espresso Martini, created by Dick Bradsell (London, 1983; originally “Vodka Espresso”), is the era’s breakout “martini” by name: vodka, fresh espresso, coffee liqueur, sugar.
From the 2000s forward, craft and mixology-forward bars restored historical ratios and reinstated orange bitters, revived the 50/50 (equal parts gin and dry vermouth), and shrank glass sizes to protect temperature and aromatics.
Cocktail Construction Chart by the US Department of Agriculture