Martini, Negroni and the gin and vermouth drinks

The Martini began as a sweet drink. Difford’s Guide traces the first printed Martinez to O.H. Byron’s The Modern Bartender of 1884, and the first recipe called a Martini to Harry Johnson’s Bartender Manual of 1888: Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, orange curaçao, gum syrup and bitters. Frank P. Newman’s American-Bar of 1904 carries the first recipe titled a Dry Martini Cocktail, at equal parts gin and dry vermouth, and Difford’s credits part of the shift to Martini & Rossi advertising its dry vermouth in American newspapers at the turn of the century.

From there the vermouth kept shrinking. A 1:1 Martini is a fifty-fifty, 2:1 is called wet, and anything past about 5:1 is dry; Difford’s lists a 15:1 Montgomery and a Churchill in which the vermouth stays in the bottle. The IBA’s Dry Martini is 60ml of gin to 10ml of dry vermouth, stirred, with lemon peel or an olive, and that 6:1 pour is the one our Martini page uses. No ratio is correct. A fifty-fifty made with a fresh bottle of vermouth is a different drink from a 6:1, not a worse one, and the way to find yours is to move the vermouth 5ml at a time.

The variants on our pages each change one thing. The Gibson is the same 60ml to 10ml with two cocktail onions; Difford’s notes that what first set it apart was the absence of orange bitters, at a time when a dash in a Martini was normal, and that the onion came later. The Vesper swaps part of the gin for vodka and the vermouth for Lillet Blanc, and it is shaken because Ian Fleming wrote it that way in Casino Royale in 1953: three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, which has not been made since 1986. The Bradford is a Martini with orange bitters, shaken on purpose.

Three names you will meet have no page of their own, because each is a Martini with one adjustment. A dirty Martini adds a spoon of brine from the olive jar, 5 to 10ml, and takes the olive as its garnish. A perfect Martini splits the vermouth between dry and sweet. A reverse Martini turns the ratio round, more vermouth than gin, and drinks at wine strength.

Vermouth is not a spirit. In the retained Regulation (EU) 251/2014 it is an aromatised wine, flavoured with substances from Artemisia species, with alcohol added, at an actual strength of at least 14.5% and under 22%. Our dry vermouth page gives 18% ABV and sweet vermouth 16%. Wine at that strength oxidises once the bottle is open.

That is why so many flat Martinis are blamed on the gin. A bottle of dry vermouth left on the shelf for six months tastes dull and sherry-like, and 10ml of it carries that into the glass. Keep an open bottle in the fridge, capped, and use it within three to four weeks, the figure both vermouth pages give. Buy half bottles if a bottle lasts longer than that. A 6:1 Martini with a fresh vermouth shows more of the vermouth than a fifty-fifty made with a tired one.

Every drink here is spirit, aromatised wine and bitter liqueur, with nothing cloudy in it, so it is stirred. Stirring over plenty of ice for 20 to 30 seconds chills and dilutes the drink while keeping it clear and silky; shaking aerates it, breaks the ice into chips and leaves it cloudy. The IBA’s Dry Martini, Negroni, Martinez, Hanky Panky and Cardinale all stir. Shaken or stirred sets out the reasons and the timings in full.

The Vesper is the deliberate exception, shaken because Casino Royale says so, and the Bradford is a Martini shaken for the chips of ice and the cloud. Both are choices about texture.

The Negroni is 30ml each of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth in the IBA’s specification, built over ice in an old fashioned glass with half an orange slice; ours is stirred in a mixing glass and strained over fresh ice. The usual story, which Difford’s Guide retells, puts it in Florence in 1919, when Count Camillo Negroni asked Fosco Scarselli at the Caffè Casoni to strengthen his Americano with gin in place of the soda. Difford’s Guide tells it with care: the earliest equal-parts recipe it finds is a Campari Mixte in a French book of 1929, the first printed under the Negroni name is from 1955, and a branch of the Negroni family disputes the Count altogether. On Difford’s evidence, treat 1919 as the tradition rather than the record.

A bourbon Negroni already has a name. Swap the gin for 45ml of bourbon and the drink is a Boulevardier, which the IBA lists with bourbon or rye and strains into a cocktail glass; ours goes over ice in a rocks glass. Keep the whiskey and change the sweet vermouth for dry and it becomes an Old Pal, first printed in Harry MacElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails in 1927, in a chapter by the columnist Arthur Moss. The 1927 text credits it to “Sparrow” Robertson; Difford’s Guide transcribes the name as Robinson. The Cardinale keeps the gin and goes dry and gin-heavy: 40ml to 20ml of dry vermouth to 10ml of Campari.

The White Negroni replaces both the Campari and the sweet vermouth, with Suze, a gentian liqueur, for the bitter and Lillet Blanc for the wine. Difford’s records it as Wayne Collins’s drink, mixed at VinExpo in Bordeaux in 2001 with Plymouth Gin. The Negroni Sbagliato drops the gin for prosecco; the word means mistaken, and the story from Bar Basso in Milan, as Campari tells it, is that Mirko Stocchetto reached for the sparkling wine instead of the gin in 1972; Difford’s Guide puts it in the late 1980s. The Americano, Campari and sweet vermouth lengthened with soda, is the drink the Negroni grew out of, and the one to pour when the evening is long.

Gin and It is gin and Italian: It is short for Italian, which meant sweet red vermouth when French meant dry. Difford’s Guide, citing Dale DeGroff, has it as the Sweet Martini of the Hoffman House and other Manhattan bars in the 1880s and 1890s, and says it crossed to London during American Prohibition and settled in as a pub drink; the first Gin & It in print it finds is Frank Meier’s The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, 1936. Ours is 50ml of London dry gin to 25ml of sweet vermouth, stirred and served up.

Gin and sweet vermouth is a larger family than the dry Martini: the Hanky Panky is 45ml of each with 7.5ml of Fernet, the IBA’s specification; the Bijou adds green Chartreuse; the Vancouver and the Poet’s Dream use Bénédictine, the first with sweet vermouth and the second with dry.

The Martinez is where the Martini came from, and tasting one explains the whole drift. The IBA’s specification is 45ml of London dry gin, 45ml of sweet red vermouth, a bar spoon of maraschino and two dashes of orange bitters, stirred, with lemon zest; ours is the same, with the maraschino at 5ml of maraschino liqueur. Byron’s 1884 recipe sat beside the Manhattan, and Johnson’s 1888 Martini used Old Tom gin, so a Martinez made with Old Tom is the closest drink on our pages to the original. The Turf Club, Tuxedo and Ford Cocktail are the same era’s drinks with dry vermouth, Old Tom and a dash or two of something. Gin styles compared explains what Old Tom is.

Stirred drinks served up go into a chilled glass. A Nick & Nora or a small coupe holds a 70 to 90ml drink without the wide, spilling rim of a martini glass. Negronis, Boulevardiers and Sbagliatos go over ice in a rocks glass, one large cube for preference, because the drink keeps diluting as it sits.

The garnish follows the drink. Lemon peel for a Dry Martini, a Martinez and a Cardinale, with the oils squeezed over the surface; an olive if asked for; two onions make a Gibson. Half an orange slice for a Negroni and a Sbagliato, orange zest for a Boulevardier and a Hanky Panky, and a twist of pink grapefruit for a White Negroni, which Difford’s says the drink depends on. How to garnish a cocktail covers the cuts, and how to balance a cocktail covers why a 6:1 and a fifty-fifty can both be right. What gin is, how it is made and what London dry means in law is in what is gin.

The Dry Martini, Negroni, Boulevardier, Martinez, Hanky Panky, Cardinale, Tuxedo and Vesper measures are the IBA’s official specifications, checked on 12 October 2026. The Martini’s history and ratios, and the origins of the Gibson, Old Pal, White Negroni, Gin and It and Negroni Sbagliato, follow Difford’s Guide, checked the same day. Vermouth’s legal definition is Annex II of the retained Regulation (EU) 251/2014 on legislation.gov.uk.