Cocktail recipe
Dry Martini
Cool, crystalline and unapologetically gin-forward, with just enough dry vermouth to bring the botanicals into focus.
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) London dry gin
- 10 ml (⅓ oz) dry vermouth
- Garnish: 1 lemon twist OR 1 green olive
Preparation
Fill a mixing glass with firm ice. Add gin and chilled dry vermouth; stir until thoroughly cold and properly diluted. Strain into a frozen Martini glass. Express a lemon twist over the surface, or use one green olive if preferred.
Glassware
Chilled Martini / cocktail glass
History
The Dry Martini emerged gradually from a late-19th-century family of gin-and-vermouth drinks, rather than from one documented inventor. O. H. Byron's 1884 Martinez was gin in place of whiskey in a Manhattan-like drink. Harry Johnson's 1888 Martini used Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, curaçao, syrup and bitters—far sweeter than today's version. By 1900 the Marguerite offered a gin-and-French-vermouth route toward the dry style; the familiar gin-forward, dry-vermouth Martini evolved over subsequent decades. Claims that it was invented on a single date in Martinez, California, or by a named gold-rush bartender are not established as fact.
Mixology View
The dry Martini is an evolution, not a birth certificate. Our 6:1 gin-to-vermouth specification is a contemporary house choice; earlier printed drinks were much wetter and often sweeter.