Gin & It
The Gin & It is the martini’s English aunt: gin and Italian sweet vermouth, the It of the name, poured together with ceremony and, in the classic London reading, no ice at all. It ruled the West End’s theatre bars and hotel lounges through the first half of the twentieth century, ordered as gin-and-Italian by drinkers who considered American ice an affectation. It is the sweet martini at its most relaxed. Where a Martinez dresses the same pairing with maraschino and a Hanky Panky with fernet, the Gin & It simply lets gin and red vermouth talk to each other, and the room-temperature tradition rewards trying once: the botanicals of both bottles arrive noticeably louder unchilled. The modern serve stirs it cold and settles toward two to one, and both readings are given here. Either way it is the fastest sweet martini in the canon and the best use of an open vermouth this side of a Negroni.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish: Orange Slice and Maraschino Cherry in the lounge tradition
Ingredients
50ml
The English half: a firm London Dry, exactly as the theatre bars poured it. Its juniper needs to be audible against a large measure of sweet vermouth.
25ml
The It of the name: Italian red vermouth, fresh and refrigerated, at the modern two-to-one. The vintage pour ran half and half and unchilled.
Instructions
Stir the gin and sweet vermouth with ice for 20 seconds.
Strain into a chilled coupe.
Garnish with an orange slice.
For the vintage reading: skip the ice entirely and pour both at room temperature into a small glass.
Expert Tip
Try the unchilled original once, because it explains its own era better than any amount of history does. Without ice, both bottles speak at full volume: the gin’s botanicals arrive unmuted and the vermouth’s herbs and caramel are far more legible than they are at four degrees. It is a strange drink to modern taste and a genuinely instructive one. For everyday purposes the modern reading is the keeper: stirred cold over ice at two parts gin to one of vermouth, which is recognisably the sweet martini’s frame with the volume politely lowered. Whichever you pour, the vermouth has to be fresh. It is a third of the glass at modern ratios and half of it at the vintage one.
Flavour Profile
The Origin
Gin-and-Italian was London’s default sweet gin drink from the Edwardian era through the 1950s, with the It abbreviating Italian vermouth as opposed to French, which meant dry.
It was poured in theatre bars and hotel lounges, frequently without ice in the English manner, and it faded as the dry martini’s ratios conquered the world after the war. The abbreviation was standard bar shorthand by the 1920s and had largely disappeared from ordinary speech by the 1970s, which is roughly the arc of the drink itself.
The It
The vermouth is a third of the drink at modern ratios and half of it at the vintage one, so the standing freshness rule applies at full force: refrigerated, young, and poured generously.
A rich Italian red in the Torino style gives the drink its plush, which is what the gin is there to cut against. The same bottle serves a Negroni, which is the practical economics of keeping one fresh: buy small, open it for a purpose, and get through it. A tired vermouth here is not a slightly worse drink, it is a different and worse one.
Ice and Ratio
The vintage half-and-half, unchilled, is a period piece worth one honest visit. It is warmer, louder and sweeter than any modern drink, and it makes plain how much cold and dilution do to a cocktail, which is easy to forget when everything arrives at the same temperature.
The contemporary two-to-one, stirred cold, is the keeper for ordinary use: recognisably the sweet martini’s frame with the volume politely lowered. Twenty seconds of stirring is enough, because there is no citrus or sugar here needing to be worked in.
Where Seasoning Takes It
The gin-and-sweet-vermouth core is the starting point for a small family, and the Gin & It is that core with nothing on it.
Add maraschino and bitters and you have a Martinez. Add a bar spoon of fernet and you have a Hanky Panky. Add Campari in equal measure and you are in Negroni territory. Each of those is worth knowing, and each is easier to understand having met the unadorned version first, because they are all arguments about what this pairing needs and the honest answer is that it does not strictly need anything.
How to Serve It
As the two-minute aperitif for when a Negroni feels like a commitment: no bitters, no build, one stir, an orange slice.
It converts vermouth sceptics faster than any amount of explaining, largely because most people’s objection is to a bottle that has been open since Christmas rather than to vermouth itself. And it gives the open bottle in the fridge door a weeknight purpose, which is the most useful thing a simple drink can do.
The Spirit
GinA flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the It stand for?
Italian. Gin-and-Italian meant gin with sweet red vermouth, as against gin-and-French, which meant dry vermouth instead. The abbreviation was standard London bar shorthand by the 1920s and had faded out of ordinary speech by the 1970s.
Is it really served without ice?
The classic London serve was room temperature, and trying it once explains the era: both bottles arrive at full volume, unmuted by cold. The modern reading stirs it over ice, and both are given here as legitimate versions.
How does it differ from a Martinez?
Seasoning, and nothing else. A Martinez adds maraschino and bitters to the same gin-and-sweet-vermouth core; the Gin & It is that core entirely unadorned. Meeting the plain version first makes the whole family considerably easier to understand.
What ratio should I use?
Two parts gin to one of vermouth for the modern reading, stirred cold. The vintage London pour ran half and half at room temperature, which is sweeter and much louder, and worth trying once for what it teaches.
Master the Techniques
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Martinez
The Martinez is the oldest documented ancestor of the Martini and the drink from which the entire stirred gin cocktail tradition most likely descends. It appeared in Jerry Thomas's 1887 bar guide in a form recognisable today: gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino, and bitters, stirred and served cold. The Martini took the format, swapped sweet vermouth for dry, removed the maraschino, and produced something cleaner and less complex. Whether that represents progress or loss depends entirely on which drink you are holding. The Martinez is richer, more layered, and more demanding of attention than the Martini it inspired. The sweet vermouth brings body and fruit character that dry vermouth does not; the maraschino introduces a dry cherry and almond note that sits underneath the gin without announcing itself; the bitters tie everything together. The official specification builds it at equal parts on London Dry with orange bitters, and that is the recipe above: drier, sharper, and more clearly a relative of the Martini. The nineteenth-century reading uses Old Tom, a shorter vermouth measure and Angostura, and it is carried below with its own proportions.
Hanky Panky
Ada Coleman ran the American Bar at the Savoy from 1903 to 1926, the first and for nearly a century the only woman to hold the post, and mixed for Mark Twain, the Prince of Wales and anyone else London considered worth knowing. The Hanky Panky was built for the actor Charles Hawtrey, who arrived exhausted and asked for something with a point to it. Coleman’s answer, by her own account after much experimenting, made Hawtrey declare it the real hanky-panky, and the name never left. The structure is a sweet martini with a twist of genius: equal parts gin and sweet vermouth, seasoned with a barspoon and a half of Fernet Branca. That small dose of Milan’s great bitter amaro runs through the drink like a dark thread, menthol and roots under the vermouth’s plush, and makes the Hanky Panky the first great amaro-accented cocktail, decades ahead of the fashion. It drinks like velvet with a conscience: rounded and warming at the front, bitter and cooling at the finish, with the orange twist bridging the two. One of the very few pre-war cocktails that needs no modernising at all.
Negroni
The Negroni is the most ordered classic cocktail in the world and the drink that defined the contemporary revival. It is also one of the simplest: equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, stirred and served over ice with an orange peel. That simplicity is a function of how precisely the three are calibrated against one another. The story most commonly told places Count Camillo Negroni at the Caffè Casoni in Florence in 1919, asking Fosco Scarselli to strengthen his Americano by replacing the soda with gin. The account is debated; the structure is not. Both drinks share the same base of Campari and sweet vermouth, and that one substitution turns a sessionable aperitif into one of the most spirit-forward short drinks there is. The sweet vermouth is the most commonly neglected variable. At equal volume it is a third of the drink rather than a background ingredient, and a bottle left open at room temperature for months will define a Negroni more completely than the gin does, with no amount of good Campari correcting it.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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