The Bar Journal

Following the Vermouth revival in US, in collaboration with cocktail historian Jared Brown and Anastatia Miller, we like sharing with you few anecdotes about the most iconic cocktail in the world :

The Dry Martini

THE FIRST VERMOUTH COCKTAILS

THE WORD “COCKTAIL” FIRST APPEARED IN LONDON IN 1798.

IT APPEARED IN AMERICA IN 1803 AND WAS DEFINED IN PRINT IN 1806

Sugar + spirit + bitters + water

Although French vermouth first arrived in the US in 1844 and in Italian vermouth landed in New York in 1853, vermouth was not a cocktail ingredient until the 1870s. There wasn’t a single cocktail with vermouth in the 1862 edition of Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide or in Willliam Terrington’s 1869 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks.

Harry “The Dean” Johnson was the first mixologist to publish an amazing 11 cocktails with vermouth in his 1880 Bartenders’ Manual. The Vermouth Cocktail, the Manhattan, the Trilby, the Morning Cocktail, Bijou Cocktail, Silver Cocktail, Turf Cocktail, Tuxedo Cocktail, Marguerite (the true mother of the Dry Martini), the Martini, and Bradford a la Martini were testaments to vermouth’s popularity in cocktails. Johnson originated most of these cocktails himself, save for the Manhattan.

So who created the other famous vermouth cocktail of the 1880s the Martinez?

…..One legend claims that, in 1849, a gold miner stepped into the El Dorado in San Francisco on his way to the town of Martinez and asked Jerry “The Professor” Thomas to shake up something special. But Thomas never published a Martinez recipe in his book. The publisher added both to a revised edition that they issued in 1887, two years after his death!

…..Another story says that in 1870 a gold miner stopped at Julio Richelieu’s saloon in Martinez, California. The miner put a small pouch of gold and an empty bottle on the bar to be filled with Whisky. But the traveler wasn’t satisfied with the trade, so Richelieu mixed up a small drink and plopped an olive in it, and named it after his town. But by the time this story is said to have occurred, the Gold Rush was no more.

We may never know who really invented it. Nevertheless, the Martinez is still one of the finest examples of the marriage of gin and Italian vermouth.

But who created the most iconic COCKTAIL in the history of the world?

Who claimed to have invented it and when?

1850: Parker’s Saloon, Boston

1850: Jerry “The professor” Thomas, El Dorado, San Francisco

1860: Harry “The Dean” Johnson, San Francisco

1894: Heublein Company, Hartfor CT

1910: The American Bar at the Savoy

1910: Signor Martinez at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York

1910: Martini de Arma di Taggia, Knickbocker Hotel, New York

1911: The New York Bar, Paris.

After the Second World War, the famed Harry`s Bar in Venice introduced a version called The Montgomery; named after British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who preferred odds of 15 British soldiers to 1 of the enemy before engaging battle…Very Dry.

The Vesper, invented by Ian Fleming in 1953 and published in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, gave rise to one of the most famous line “Shaken, not stirred”!! 

The Bond movies popularized the phrase and Vodka Martinis from 1962 until present day.

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