Martinez

Classic Cocktail

A classic stirred gin-and-vermouth cocktail built with Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur, bitters, ice, and citrus expression.

Method

Method & Technique

The LMA Martinez is a stirred, spirit-and-wine cocktail served up.

Add Old Tom gin, fresh sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur, and aromatic bitters to a mixing glass. Fill with cold, solid ice and stir until properly chilled and diluted. Strain into a thoroughly chilled Nick & Nora, coupe, or small cocktail glass. Express a fresh lemon peel over the surface and garnish with the twist.

Do not over-stir. The Martinez contains a substantial measure of vermouth and can become thin if handled carelessly. The target is a cold, integrated cocktail with enough dilution to open its aromatics while preserving body.

The sweet vermouth must be refrigerated after opening, labeled, dated, and tasted regularly. Vermouth is not a background seasoning here; it is a major structural ingredient. Oxidized vermouth will make the entire cocktail taste flat, muddy, or stale.

Measure the maraschino precisely. Maraschino is potent even in small quantities and should create complexity without becoming the drink’s dominant flavor. It is a clear cherry liqueur with a relatively dry, funky, floral, kernel-like profile—not red cocktail-cherry syrup.

The LMA service method is stirred because that produces the polished, clear texture expected from a modern spirit-and-vermouth cocktail. Bartenders should nevertheless know that Jerry Thomas’s 1887 recipe instructed the drink to be shaken. Stirring is the deliberate modern LMA service standard, not a claim about the earliest documented technique.

Related Core Methods

Guest Story

The Martinez is an excellent recommendation for guests who enjoy Manhattans, Martinis, Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, historic cocktails, or rich stirred drinks.

A concise guest description would be:
“It’s an early gin-and-vermouth classic that sits between the worlds of the Manhattan and Martini. Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, a small maraschino accent, bitters, and lemon make it rich, aromatic, and gently sweet.”
For a Manhattan drinker:
“It follows an older Manhattan-like structure, but gin replaces the whiskey and maraschino adds a subtle cherry and nutty accent.”
For a Martini drinker:
“It is softer, sweeter, and much more vermouth-forward than a Dry Martini, with an older nineteenth-century style of balance.”

This is not the best recommendation for someone requesting something sharply dry, sour, bubbly, tropical, or low in alcohol. It is an aromatic, alcohol-forward stirred cocktail with noticeable sweetness and fortified-wine character.

For the bartender, the Martinez teaches that cocktail families evolved through overlapping recipes rather than clean modern categories.

For the owner, it gives the program a historically meaningful gin cocktail that demonstrates knowledge beyond the standard Martini, Negroni, and Gimlet.

Method

Guest Story

Origin

Where It Came From

The Martinez is one of the foundational gin-and-vermouth cocktails of the late nineteenth century and an important link between Manhattan-style drinks and the emerging Martini family.

The earliest presently known printed reference appears in O. H. Byron’s 1884 The Modern Bartenders’ Guide. Byron instructs the bartender to prepare the Martinez like a Manhattan, substituting gin for whiskey. That establishes the drink by name and identifies its basic family, but it does not produce one indisputable recipe: Byron printed two different Manhattan formulas, making his shorthand inherently ambiguous.

The first fully specified printed Martinez recipe appeared in the 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide. It called for Old Tom gin, vermouth, maraschino liqueur, Boker’s bitters, and lemon. Importantly, Thomas’s drink contained substantially more vermouth than gin and was shaken. That historical formula is richer, sweeter, and more vermouth-driven than most modern Martinez recipes.

The Martinez should therefore be understood as an early gin-and-vermouth cocktail documented first as a gin-based Manhattan variation—not simplistically declared “the first Martini.” It belongs to the cluster of nineteenth-century drinks from which the Martini family developed, but no surviving evidence proves one perfectly straight evolutionary line from Martinez to Martini.

The drink’s inventor, birthplace, and name remain unresolved. Two stories are frequently repeated:
One credits bartender Jerry Thomas with making the drink in San Francisco for a traveler heading to Martinez, California.

Another places its creation in Martinez itself, sometimes crediting bartender Julio Richelieu with serving a “Martinez Special” to a miner.

Both are useful pieces of cocktail folklore, but neither is supported by contemporary documentation strong enough to be taught as fact. Even the spelling varied historically; Harry Johnson printed a related “Martine Cocktail” in 1888.

For LMA service, the Martinez is a rich, aromatic, vermouth-forward gin cocktail—not a sweet Martini and not merely a Manhattan with gin. It should be cold, smooth, botanical, gently sweet, subtly nutty and cherry-toned, lightly spiced, and lifted by citrus oil.

Notes

Bartender Notes

Deep Dive

The Martinez matters because its printed history captures cocktails in transition. Its earliest known appearance does not offer the tidy standardized formula modern bartenders might expect.

In 1884, O. H. Byron described it through substitution: make a Manhattan and replace the whiskey with gin. The problem is that Byron supplied two Manhattan recipes. One combined equal measures of whiskey and Italian vermouth with curaçao and Angostura bitters; another used considerably more whiskey, less vermouth, gum syrup, and bitters. His Martinez instruction establishes the drink’s relationship to the Manhattan, but it leaves the intended measurements uncertain.

Jerry Thomas’s 1887 recipe removes much of that ambiguity. It called for approximately:
1 ounce Old Tom gin
2 ounces vermouth
2 dashes maraschino
1 dash Boker’s bitters
Lemon

Optional gum syrup when the guest wanted a particularly sweet drink
Thomas instructed the bartender to shake and strain it. That is crucial historical context: the earliest explicit recipe was vermouth-heavy and shaken. A bartender should know this even when the house intentionally serves a more balanced, stirred modern interpretation.

LMA Service Spec
1.50 oz Old Tom Gin
1.50 oz Sweet Vermouth
0.25 oz Maraschino Liqueur
2 dashes Aromatic Bitters
Expressed Lemon Twist

This is the LMA restaurant-service standard, not a claim that it reproduces one indisputable “original” Martinez. It preserves the drink’s historic Old Tom, sweet-vermouth, maraschino, bitters, and lemon identity while producing a balanced volume and a polished modern service.

The equal-parts relationship between gin and vermouth places the drink between Byron’s ambiguous gin-Manhattan instruction and Thomas’s highly vermouth-forward formula. It allows the vermouth to remain central without letting it overwhelm the gin.

Old Tom Gin
Old Tom gin is historically justified because Thomas named it explicitly in 1887. Depending on the producer, Old Tom may be sweeter, rounder, maltier, softer, or more barrel-influenced than London Dry. Those differences mean the completed cocktail must be tested with the actual house bottle.
London Dry gin produces a leaner, more juniper-forward Martinez. Genever produces a maltier, heavier drink. Both can be excellent written variations, but neither should silently replace the LMA standard.

Sweet Vermouth
Sweet vermouth is not a supporting rinse. It supplies a major share of the drink’s volume and personality. Choose one with enough wine character, bitterness, herbs, and spice to remain expressive beside Old Tom gin.
A bartender should taste the vermouth by itself before blaming the recipe. If the bottle tastes tired, flat, or oxidized, the Martinez cannot be corrected through longer stirring or additional bitters.

Maraschino Liqueur
Maraschino gives the Martinez an identity separate from a basic gin-and-sweet-vermouth cocktail. Its flavor can suggest dry cherry, flowers, herbs, and bitter almond-like kernels. It should be detectable as complexity, not announced as candy.
If the completed drink tastes principally of maraschino, the pour is too heavy or the remaining ingredients are too weak. More is not more historical.

Bitters
Boker’s bitters are the historically specific choice for the Thomas formula. Because original Boker’s disappeared and contemporary recreations vary, LMA uses dependable aromatic bitters as its operational baseline.
Angostura-style bitters provide warm spice and structure. Orange bitters create a brighter, more Martini-adjacent drink but represent a different branch of the recipe. Whichever product the house selects should be written into the standard rather than changed casually from shift to shift.

Citrus and Garnish
Lemon is the LMA garnish because its oil cuts through the sweet vermouth and maraschino and gives the finished drink a cleaner nose. Thomas’s recipe used a small lemon slice; modern expressed peel supplies the aroma without placing juice or excess fruit in the cocktail.
An orange twist makes the drink rounder, warmer, and more confectionary. A cherry can complement the historical flavor family, but it risks making guests expect a cherry-sweet drink. Those are defensible house choices, not the LMA baseline.

History Versus Legend
The Martinez, California story is worth knowing because bartenders will encounter it. Local tradition describes a bartender producing a “Martinez Special” for a miner and the name later shortening to Martinez or Martini. Other accounts place Jerry Thomas in San Francisco serving the drink to a traveler bound for Martinez.

The correct expert response is:
“Those are the famous origin stories, but neither has contemporary evidence strong enough to identify the inventor. What we can prove is that the Martinez appeared in print by 1884 and received a complete published recipe in 1887.”
That answer gives the guest the story without turning folklore into fact.

Quality Standard
A properly made Martinez should be cold, smooth, botanical, vermouth-rich, gently sweet, lightly spiced, subtly cherry-toned, and brightened by lemon oil. It should retain enough gin character to remain recognizable as a gin cocktail.

It should not be warm, watery, syrupy, dominated by maraschino, overwhelmed by vermouth, harsh from under-dilution, or dull from oxidized fortified wine.