5 cl Old Tom Gin
2 cl Sweet Vermouth
1 cl Dry Vermouth
0.5 cl Marachino Liqueur
1-2 dashes of Angostura Bitters
Stir
Cocktail glass
Orange twist
Add all ingredients into a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail (or coupe) glass. Garnish with an orange (or lemon) twist.
Martinez is in the category “Before Dinner”. This Gin-based recipe is generally proposed to be tasted during the aperitif. This is a 7 cl short drink cocktail, containing 33% alcohol volume.
The cocktail consists of sublimating a good gin. It must be as fresh as possible while being quite dry to let its aromas be released. The floral flavors of gin mixing here with that of vermouth and bitter, in other words, a real cocktail of aromas of herbs and plants.
During the California gold rush in 1849, a miner who had just made his fortune returned to San Francisco. Arriving in the city of Martinez, the first big city on his way, he wanted to celebrate his fresh wealth. He went into a bar and asked for Champagne, but they were out. The bartender told him he had something better and then served him what he called a “Martinez Special”. The miner enjoyed the drink and paid around to all the customers. Later, in another bar, he asked for the same cocktail, which nobody knew. The miner explained the composition to him, the bartender himself tasted it and suggested it to his friends.
It is not known, however, whether this story is true. Another theory says that the Martini and Rossi brands created Dry Vermouth in 1863. When this drink arrived in the United States, a bartender mixed it with gin. In any case, the origin of this cocktail is either English or American.
Martini is therefore the real name of the cocktail, composed of gin and vermouth. It’s called Dry Martini in France and Europe.
Original Martinez Recipe (as printed in the re-release of O.H. Byron’s The Modern Bartender’s Guide, 2008):
3 cl Old Tom Gin
3 cl Sweet Vermouth
2 dashes of Curaçao liqueur
2 dashes of Angostura biters
