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.
Variations
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish: Lemon Peel or Luxardo and Maraschino Cherry
Ingredients
45ml
What the official specification names. Drier and more juniper-forward than the Old Tom the drink was built on, which shifts the balance toward the vermouth and makes the maraschino read as perfume rather than as sweetness.
45ml
Refrigerate after opening and replace within four weeks. At this volume it is a structural ingredient, not a modifier, and a stale bottle will define the drink.
5ml
Luxardo is the benchmark. Brings dry cherry and almond character that sits underneath the gin without dominating. Do not increase the measure.
2 dashes
The official choice, and the historically defensible one: orange bitters were the standard aromatic when this drink was written, and they lift the maraschino rather than sitting underneath it the way Angostura does.
Instructions
Chill a coupe in the freezer or with ice water before building the drink.
Add Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, Luxardo Maraschino, and Angostura bitters to a mixing glass.
Add a scoop of large cubed ice and stir for 20 to 25 seconds until well chilled and properly diluted.
Discard the chilling ice from the coupe and strain the cocktail cleanly into the glass.
Cut a wide strip of lemon peel and express the oils over the surface of the drink.
Rest the peel on the rim and serve immediately.
Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 13 August 2026.
Expert Tip
The maraschino measure is small for a reason. At a bar spoon it contributes character without pulling the drink toward sweetness, and increasing it to match the other modifiers is a common instinct and a mistake: the sweet vermouth is already providing body and sweetness, so the maraschino is a seasoning rather than a modifier. Vermouth freshness matters more here than almost anywhere. At equal volume to the gin, a tired bottle defines the drink before the gin has said anything at all. Refrigerate it from opening and replace it within four weeks. If it tastes sharper than you expected, that is the London Dry doing its job. The Old Tom build below is the softer, sweeter, historically earlier reading, and it is a genuinely different drink rather than the same one with a different label.
Flavour Profile
The Origin
Jerry Thomas included the Martinez in the 1887 edition of his bar guide, making it one of the earliest documented recipes for a stirred gin cocktail. Thomas was the most influential American bartender of the nineteenth century, and presence in his guide gave the Martinez a permanence that drinks documented only in later sources do not have. The town of Martinez in California claims the drink was created locally for a gold miner passing through; the story is appealing but unsupported by documentary evidence predating Thomas’s 1887 publication. The more likely origin is the broader Manhattan and Martini tradition developing in New York and other American cities during the 1870s and 1880s, of which the Martinez was an early and well-constructed example.
The Martinez and the Martini
No single recipe or bartender’s decision marks the point at which the Martinez became the Martini. It was a gradual evolution across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: sweet vermouth progressively replaced by dry, the maraschino removed, the ratio shifted, the result cleaner and more austere. By the time the Martini became the defining cocktail of the twentieth century, the Martinez had largely disappeared from bar menus. The pre-Prohibition revival from the late 1990s onward brought it back into bars willing to work with Old Tom gin and sweet vermouth in the original proportions. Understanding the Martinez is one of the most direct routes to understanding the Martini, because the relationship makes explicit what the Martini kept, what it removed, and what was gained and lost.
Old Tom Gin
Old Tom is a style that predates London Dry and was the dominant form of gin in Britain during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: typically slightly sweeter, less juniper-forward, and softer in profile, though the style has no legal definition and production varies between distillers.
It is what the Martinez was built around, and the reason the historical proportions look odd beside the official ones. With a sweetened, softer gin the drink needs less vermouth to find its balance, which is why nineteenth-century readings run around 45ml of gin to 30ml of vermouth rather than the equal parts the official specification calls for. Substitute Old Tom into the official build and it turns sweet; substitute London Dry into the historical one and it turns thin.
The pre-Prohibition revival from the late 1990s onward brought both back into bars, and the drink is now poured either way. Neither is wrong. They are calibrated differently because they are built on different gin.
The Maraschino Balance
Luxardo Maraschino is present at a deliberately restrained 7.5ml, small enough to function as a seasoning rather than a primary modifier: dry cherry, almond, and a faint bitterness from the marasca cherry pit, without pulling the drink toward sweetness. The gin and sweet vermouth are the structural elements; the maraschino and bitters are the finish. Increasing the measure is a common error. The Bijou and the Last Word use maraschino in similar supporting roles, and all three drinks make the same argument: the measure is deliberate and should not be increased.
How to Serve It
Stirred, strained, and served cold in a coupe with expressed lemon peel over the surface. A Luxardo cherry dropped into the glass instead reinforces the maraschino note and gives a clean, sweet finish. Either garnish is correct: the lemon peel suits the drink’s more aromatic, gin-forward character, the cherry suits those who want the fruit present throughout. This is an evening drink in weight and character, suited to the period after a meal or as a considered pre-dinner pour for those who want something richer than the Martini it inspired.
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 is a Martinez?
The oldest documented ancestor of the Martini: gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino and bitters, stirred and served cold. The official specification pours London Dry at equal parts with the vermouth and finishes with orange bitters; the nineteenth-century reading uses Old Tom, less vermouth and Angostura.
How does it differ from a Martini?
The Martini took the format, swapped sweet vermouth for dry, and removed the maraschino, producing something cleaner and less complex. The Martinez is richer, more layered, and more demanding of attention than the drink it inspired.
Old Tom or London Dry gin?
Old Tom is correct: the sweeter, less juniper-forward style the original was built around, which integrates with the sweet vermouth and the maraschino rather than fighting them. London Dry is a legitimate substitution but considerably more assertive, and not the same drink.
Master the Techniques
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Martini
The Martini is the most argued-about drink in the history of bartending. The disputes over ratio, gin versus vodka, stirred versus shaken, olive versus twist have run for over a century, and most are preference dressed up as correctness. The Martini tolerates a wide range of builds. What it does not tolerate is imprecision or poor ingredients. The version documented here is a gin Martini at the official ratio of six parts gin to one of dry vermouth, stirred, served cold, with a lemon twist. At that ratio the vermouth reads as a mineral edge and a wine note behind the juniper rather than an equal partner, which is where the modern consensus has settled. Wetter builds are set out below and none of them is wrong. The fashion for extremely dry Martinis, with the vermouth reduced to a rinse or omitted entirely, produces what is technically chilled gin. There is nothing wrong with chilled gin. It is not a Martini. The vermouth matters as much as the gin. Treat it as perishable, keep it refrigerated, and replace it within four weeks.
Bijou
The Bijou was created by Harry Johnson and published in his 1900 Bartenders' Manual, the name taken from the French word for jewel. The three base ingredients each represent a precious stone: gin for diamond, sweet vermouth for ruby, green Chartreuse for emerald. It is one of the most demanding drinks in the classic canon to balance correctly. Green Chartreuse is a 130-botanical French liqueur made by Carthusian monks since 1737, and it does not share space quietly. It brings herbal complexity, sweetness and considerable alcoholic weight to the glass. The gin must be assertive enough to hold its own, the sweet vermouth must be fresh, and the orange bitters tie the three together. The proportions are not equal parts, whatever the jewel conceit suggests: forty millilitres of gin against twenty each of Chartreuse and vermouth is what keeps the drink standing upright rather than collapsing into herbal sweetness. The result is rich, complex and entirely spirit-forward. This is not a drink for the uninitiated and it does not pretend to be.
Last Word
The Last Word is one of the great equal-parts cocktails: gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice in identical measures, shaken and served up. No component leads and no component follows. Each of the four is assertive enough to dominate a lesser recipe, and the fact that none dominates this one is the drink’s central achievement. It originated at the Detroit Athletic Club around 1915, documented by Ted Saucier in his 1951 book Bottoms Up and attributed to vaudeville performer Frank Fogarty, who allegedly introduced it to the club. It disappeared almost entirely during and after Prohibition and was rediscovered in the early 2000s by Seattle bartender Murray Stenson, who found it in Saucier’s book and put it on the menu at the Zig Zag Café. From there it spread through the craft cocktail world and has not left. The revival was deserved. Green Chartreuse brings herbal intensity, maraschino brings cherry sweetness and a faint bitter almond note, fresh lime brings tartness, and gin holds it together. Each sip reveals a different component leading depending on where in the glass you are. It is a drink worth paying attention to.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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