The Bar Journal

Following the Vermouth revival in US, cocktail historian Jared Brown and Anastatia Miller are sharing with us few anecdotes about the most iconic cocktail in the world in their new cocktail book:

Mixellany on Vermouth & Other Liquer

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!

Also of the ten cocktail recipes in Jerry Thomas`s book, none of them included vermouth – French or Italian !!!

Then, the first copany to launch into large-scale commercial Vermouth production and international marketing took the stage ” The MARTINI & ROSSI” who in 1890 out of 14,715,564 litres of Martini Vermouth exported to the US, 308,713 litres alone were devited to bottled cocktail partnership !!!

…..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 but we knoe today is that MARTINI & ROSSI heavly contribute to create the mos iconic cocktail in the history ;

THE MARTINI COCKTAIL

SALUTE !

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