The Martini — A Recipe Remade Piece by Piece, and an Origin Two Towns Both Claim

The secret was never the ratio. Five separate ingredients were swapped out, one at a time. And the story told about where it began exists, in the same shape, in two different towns

1. Five Ingredients, Swapped One at a Time

Today’s standard dry Martini is described as dry gin, French (dry) vermouth, and an olive.

But it wasn’t always this way. The Martini of the late 19th century was, in almost every respect, a different drink from the one we know today.

Tracing the record, the ingredients themselves changed at no fewer than five points.

• The type of gin: from sweet Old Tom gin to dry London Dry gin
• The vermouth’s origin and sweetness: from sweet Italian vermouth to dry French vermouth (a ship’s diary from 1890 records the combination of “gin and French vermouth”)
• The amount of vermouth: from a near-equal ratio to today’s mere trace
• The garnish: from a cherry to an olive
• The bitters: from Angostura bitters, through orange bitters, to — in most cases today — none at all

The Chicago Tribune, in 1893, reported that style had already diverged between Boston and Chicago — “in Boston… the vermouth floats in a rolling sea of gin.”

In other words, calling the Martini “refined” is not a figure of speech. Its components were, one by one, literally replaced with different materials. Between 1896 and 1898, “Dry Martini” settled in as an independent category — but at first, this wasn’t about ratio at all. It was about using French, dry vermouth.

2. The Origin Story Exists in Two Towns

Two well-known stories are told about where the Martini began.

The first. At the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, bartender Jerry Thomas is said to have mixed a special drink — in exchange for a gold nugget — for a customer setting off for the town of Martinez.

The second. In the town of Martinez, California, a bartender named Julio Richelieu is said to have improvised the drink for a customer who had just struck gold.

Both are good stories. There’s a setting, a named figure, a specific motive.

Yet neither story carries a date.

Wikipedia’s entry on the subject states plainly that both accounts are “difficult to verify because records of drinks at the time are missing or incomplete.” No record fixing a year exists for either side.

The Same Shape of Story, Recurring

Here, one thing stands out.

There’s a setting, a named figure, a specific motive — and in that sense, this carries the same texture as the Manhattan’s origin story, covered in the previous episode. The specifics differ (a bartender improvising for a customer, versus a socialite hosting a dinner), but both circulated as “good stories” without ever carrying a date. And that story, too, fell apart the moment anyone checked the dates.

The same shape of story, recurring without evidence, is itself a clue — one that speaks to the reliability of the stories themselves.

The Record That Actually Survives Is Humbler, and Earlier

Tracing the newspaper record turns up an entirely different picture.

On August 31, 1882, the Crawford Advocate reported that a whiskey-and-vermouth mixture was already circulating under several names at once — “Manhattan cocktail, Turf Club cocktail, and Jockey Club cocktail.”

On March 24, 1883, the Cleveland Leader described gin mixed with vermouth, calling it a “Manhattan cocktail” made with gin instead of whiskey. That same year, on November 25, the Chicago Tribune reported on bartenders mixing “vermouth and gin.”

In other words, the Martini’s prototype wasn’t the flash of insight of a single bartender — it emerged simultaneously, across multiple bars in multiple cities, as a gin version of the already-existing Manhattan.

Only in 1884 did a name begin to settle. O.H. Byron’s Modern Bartenders Guide recorded it as the “Martinez Cocktail” (gin substituted for whiskey in a Manhattan), while another guide called the same drink the “Turf Club Cocktail.”

The spelling “Martini” first appears in print on February 18, 1886, in the Rock Island Argus — though that recipe contained errors.

In 1887, the third edition of Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide published a “Martinez Cocktail” recipe and, through wide plagiarism, helped fix that spelling in print. Yet that very same year — on February 13, 1887 — the New York Sun reported that while the drink was “spelled ‘Martinez,'” drinkers were already calling it “the Martini.” At the exact moment print tried to lock the name down, spoken language had already moved on.

Even the Most Credible Candidate Remains “Unproven”

An obituary published in the New York Herald on September 19, 1891 identifies a Union and Racquet Club member, Franklin Martine, as the inventor of the “Martine cocktail.”

Wondrich cites this as “both the earliest and the most credible” candidate. Yet Wondrich himself, in the same breath, states plainly that this account, too, remains “unproven.”

How We Read This Uncertainty

The two town-based stories widely told as the Martini’s origin carry no date. Meanwhile, the record that can actually be verified shows not a single inventor, but a process unfolding simultaneously across several cities. And even the most thoroughly researched candidate is, by the account of the very historian who found it, unproven.

The fact that the same shape of story keeps recurring without evidence is, in itself, a finding. Even a drink as famous as the Martini has an origin left unproven, scattered across several fragments.

If that’s true, adjusting its formula is not, in any sense, an act of disrespect.

3. Vermouth — Neither Mediator Nor Partner, But a Whisper

Where the Negroni’s three ingredients held each other in equal, contesting balance, and the Manhattan ran on a “lead, partner, accent” mechanic, the Martini’s structure is different again. Here, vermouth’s very presence has been shrinking, continuously, over time.

The Base — Nearly a Solo Lead

Dry gin carries a rigid aromatic backbone centered on juniper. In the Martini, gin has moved past being merely a “foundation” — it has become the presence that carries the drink almost entirely on its own.

The Former Mediator — Now, a Whisper

In the 19th-century Martinez, vermouth was used in near-equal measure to gin. Today’s dry Martini, by contrast, has cut that measure down to 5-to-1, 10-to-1, or even a mere “rinse” — a glass barely brushed with vermouth’s aroma.

This is an entirely different kind of change from the Negroni’s “mediation” or the Manhattan’s “accompanying partner.” Vermouth didn’t keep its role while the balance shifted around it — its very presence was erased, little by little. Neither mediator nor partner — whisper is the closer word.

The Garnish — From Sweetness to Salt

The shift from cherry to olive isn’t merely a change of decoration. From a sweet fruit to a salted one. This single detail alone tells the story of the Martini’s overall character moving from “indulgent” toward “austere.”

What this breakdown surfaces is a question: what happens when a presence that has been erased, again and again, is replaced with a material that insists on being noticed?

4. What If That Vermouth Were Made From Rice

Vermouth is made from wine. That’s the accepted rule, worldwide.

Outside that rule, there’s a maker in Japan. Kanegasaki Yakusoshuzo (Kanegasaki, Iwate Prefecture) — covered in Ep.01, “Negroni” — has released a second vermouth from the same distillery.

AO-ONI DRY (Blue Oni) — a dry vermouth built on a base of honmirin, sake, and kasutori shochu. It is the dry counterpart to the sweet AKA-ONI ROSSO (Red Oni) covered in Ep.01.

What’s Different

Where Red Oni is built primarily on mirin, Blue Oni’s base is honmirin, sake, and kasutori shochu — three components. Both share a rice origin, but the composition itself differs.

The botanical profile also runs in a different direction from Red Oni. Built around wormwood placed front and center, it combines lemon, hyssop, ginger, cinnamon, and apple. Unlike Red Oni’s Japanese botanicals — kihada, kuromoji, shiso, sansho — Blue Oni leans closer to the traditional grammar of dry vermouth (wormwood plus citrus plus spice), while replacing only the base with rice. It comes across as a direct response to the vermouth style itself.

Some of these herbs are grown by the distillery itself, in fields within Toribusaku, a historic site connected to the 11th-century Abe clan.

Its ABV sits at 18% — on par with a typical dry vermouth.

5. The Distillery That Couldn’t Install a Still, Again

This distillery’s origin was covered in depth in Ep.01, “Negroni.” Here’s the essential version.

Housed in a converted wooden rice-polishing facility, the distillery couldn’t install a still due to fire code restrictions, and turned instead to maceration — steeping its botanicals separately, in three to four rounds. Founded in 2021 by a former bartender, this distillery has built two paired vermouths — the sweet Red Oni (AKA-ONI ROSSO) and the dry Blue Oni (AO-ONI DRY) — on the same constraint, and the same idea.

📎 The distillery’s origin and the details of its maceration method are covered in Ep.01, “Negroni.”

6. Toward the Martini of That Counter

Now, to the point.

This is as far as we can take it. What comes next belongs to whoever is standing behind the counter.

The following is a framework of considerations for professional bartenders. It is not intended to encourage mixing at home.

We’ve already noted that the traditional benchmark has become “a mere trace of vermouth.” Here is the information needed to decide how to work with that.

Four Points to Consider

① ABV is 18%. The structural weight holds.

Since this sits at the same level as a typical dry vermouth, substituting it in doesn’t require any major rethinking of the drink’s overall strength.

② What changes isn’t sweetness, but texture.

Where Red Oni carries a sweetness that “comes forward,” Blue Oni is a dry formulation with wormwood placed front and center. Given the Martini’s history of reducing vermouth down to a mere “whisper,” this opens in two directions: restoring vermouth’s presence by using more of it, or tightening gin’s outline with only a trace. Which produces the better result, though, isn’t ours to declare.

③ The aromatic character is citrus and spice, not Japanese botanicals.

Lemon, hyssop, ginger, and cinnamon overlap, in category, with the traditional botanical grammar of dry gin — juniper paired with citrus and spice. That said, how they actually taste together isn’t something we’re positioned to evaluate.

④ The dialogue with the garnish remains open.

How the olive — the traditional, salted garnish — relates to this citrus-and-spice aroma isn’t ours to specify.

How to Begin the First Round

Start with a mere trace, to trace the outline of Blue Oni’s wormwood?

Or increase the amount deliberately, closer to the 19th-century Martinez, where vermouth still held its presence?

Or change the gin brand instead, and search for the balance point from that side?

Any of these is a valid answer. The moment you choose that first move, it already belongs to that counter.

7. What Remains Unanswered

In this article, of the Martini’s ingredients, we moved only the vermouth.

But vermouth wasn’t the only thing this drink has changed. The type of gin, the garnish, whether bitters are used at all — of the five substitutions, we’ve addressed only one.

And what waits next is a drink with an entirely different structure. One with no mediating vermouth at all — just spirit and soda. The Highball. There, the question isn’t about layering complexity, but about stripping it away.

We’ll take that up next.