ho invented this drink we now call the Martini ? That's a
fact that may never be known. History is not as clear as a Martini.
I wish that I could tell you that I know the real story, but to tell you
the truth, I wasn't there. So all I can do is tell you the basic legends
and let you choose for yourself.
- .....One
legend claims that Professor Jerry Thomas invented a drink called
the "Martinez". As the story goes, a gold miner stepped into Thomas' San
Francisco bar on his way to the town of Martinez and asked him to shake
up something special. The recipe called for one dash of Bitters, two
dashes of Maraschino, one wine glass of Vermouth, two lamps of ice, one
pony of Old Tom Gin and served with quarter slice of lemon. No matter how
brutal this concoction sounds, was it the first "Martini"?
Well, the recipe that he supposedly made didn't show up until years later
in 1887 in a reprint of Thomas' own Bartending Book.
.....Another
story says that in 1870 a gold miner stopped at Julio Richelieu's saloon
in Martinez, California. The miner put a small pouch of gold and an empty
bottle on the bar to be filled with Whisky. But the traveler wasn't satisfied
with the trade, so Richelieu mixed up a small drink and plopped an olive in
it, and named it after his town. To this date Martinez, California still
makes claim to be the birth place of the Martini.
.....But
DrCocktail@aol.com told me, "Actually, the ORIGINAL Martini
(first called a Martinez) called for 4 parts to 1 part. That's 4 parts
VERMOUTH to 1 part gin! And (I'm not kidding) it was red Italian sweet
vermouth. This Martini was created sometime between the years 1862 and
1876. It was made with an aromatic bitters called Boker's bitters that
barely made it out of the 19th century. The closest thing we have today......
Fee's Aromatic Bitters. This version used Old Tom Gin, because there
was no such thing as London Dry when the cocktail was introduced. Old Tom
was very Junipery, a little golden, and rather sweet. Take some Bols Genever
Gin, mix with twice the volume Tanqueray, and say, sweeten with a couple
teaspoonsful of sugar, and you have a rough approximation. (There is a
brand of Old Tom that'sstill produced -Boord's makes it- but it tastes
just like London dry to me.) Next, Orange Bitters were used in preference
to Bokers, London dry gin in place of Old Tom, and the proportions went
to equal parts. Then, the Dry Martini made its debut..... equal parts London
Dry and FRENCH (Dry, or white) vermouth and orange bitters. What IS lost
to history is exactly when the olive entered the picture. I don't
know, and never met anyone who did. The original had the cherry. By 1900
a twist. Certainly by the 20s in England an olive was in place, but how
it happened is a mystery." Thanx
DOC!
.
....Time
marches on... Some say that the drink's name came from the Martini and Henry rifle used by the British army between 1871 and 1891, because both
the rifle and the drink shared a strong kick. The Oxford English
Dictionary gives the earliest use of the word Martini as 1894 and states
that the word comes from Martini and Rossi Vermouth.
.....In
1896 Thomas Stewart published a manual in New York titled Stewart's Fancy Drinks
and How To Mix Them and gave a recipe for what he called the "Marquerite":
one dash orange Bitters, 2/3 Plymouth Gin, 1/3 French Vermouth. Which
seems closer to the drink we're familiar with.
.....To
make matters even more complicated, Martini sleuth Lowell Edmunds (author of
"The Silver Bullet", 1981) established that O.H. Byron included
a Martinez recipe in his book The Modern Bartender's Guide of 1884
- three years before Professor Jerry Thomas' book. And for the record,
the first mention of the word Martini was in the New and Improved Illustrated
Bartender's Manual or How to Mix Drinks of the Present Style published
by Harry Johnson in 1888.
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