I figured if anybody might be interested in this, it would be this community. I asked Lowell Edmunds, author of the Martini book “The Silver Bullet,” to write something new about the Martini for The Mix. It was published yesterday. Here it is.
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Did you save the 2020 video conference/seminar on the Martini? That was an amazing moment that ought to be shared if possible.
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Mary Kate has it somewhere. Maybe one day we will publish it.
Garrett Oliver is the author of the second in The Mix’s new essay series about The Martini. Because even brewers have a Martini story to tell.
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I keep hoping he will do an updated version of his excellent beer encyclopedia.
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My experience with such things is it’s up to whether the publisher is willing to do an updated version.
His The Brewmaster’s Table is the valuable one for me and most restaurant workers – the description of all the beer styles back then and how to pair them with food. I still have no solid foundation on how to pair modern styles New England Hazy with food since there’s no bitter backbone to work against. Then again, it seems to work with everything (but not well).
I also have that one. Definitely needs an update as well.
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A new “Cocktail Colloquy” Martini essay from Anistatia Miller.
And a new “Cocktail Colloquy” Martini essay from David Wondrich!
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Wondrich hits it out of the park by taking the Martini through its paces from gritty to elegant.
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Trying to understand this paragraph from Anastasia Miller:
For years we have forwarded evidence to Martini’s legal department that Martini & Rossi could claim to have given its name to the drink. And for years, they have dismissed us. We hold no personal bias.
It sounds like M&R decided a century ago—and courts concurred—that the martini is named after Martini. What more to achieve?
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So glad Wondrich explained this practice:
You perched on a stool, ordered your drink, and gave the bartender a five or ten-dollar bill. He or she put your change on the bar in front of you, where after extracting a tip and sliding it over, you left it. If you wanted another, the bartender took the money out of your pile (you had to add the tip). When the pile was gone, so were you. Every third drink, the bartender declined to help himself or herself. That one was on the house.
Only recently in Wisconsin have I seen folks trusting—and immobile—enough to leave piles of money on the bar for an extended period.
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It’s true. They still do this. I’ve done it!
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Forgive me if this is a silly and uneducated question, but I saw Jared’s video on the topic yesterday (Found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5cDOh76m1E) in which he briefly goes through the Martini court case on the named ingredient used in the drink and why Anistatia and him now believe that’s the origin of the name.
My question is simply how is this different from when Bacardi tried to hustle the Daiquiri? (Via the Bacardi Cocktail) with similar name based court cases in NYC?
I get that the Bacardi debate revolved around the product being so popular that “Bacardi” became synonymous with that light style of white rum, but isn’t it similar with the Martini?
Given how late the court case claim was, surely this is a similar marketing plot?
I certainly wouldn’t be the first time Italian brands get clever with cocktail marketing like the geniuses at Campari with the Negroni!
How are they so certain this court case is different and could be the origin name reason?
The “Martini” drink name started settling into place 1886-1888, amidst a blizzard of similar and not-so-similar names for various split-base (half vermouth) cocktails in the wake of the Vermouth Cocktail (not split-base). The “Martini” drink name is assuredly† borrowed from the Martini & Rossi vermouth brand, but the brand deserves no special credit beyond being successful (common, not exclusive) in the marketplace, particularly New York City, which is evidently where most of this experimentation was taking place. (As often the case, @Splificator has done the research here‡.) It is an accident of history—another name, such as Turf Club, could have instead stuck under other circumstances. (Well, perhaps “Turf Club” never had a real chance, since many people involved would have had reasons to not prefer it.)
Also, we are talking about Italian (sweet) vermouth cocktails—French (dry) vermouth was around and also in some play, but the Dry Martini doesn’t become “a thing” until the next decade. By then it was settled that “Manhattans” were the whiskey+vermouth branch and “Martinis” were the gin+vermouth branch even though other names or telephone game mis-spellings continue to be repeated in the literature.
So, yeah, anything happening in an Italian court in 1932 is apocryphal—the horse has fled the barn, the barn has burned down, and the farm has been paved over by a freeway—and also self-serving. Moreover, when you shift the frame to Europe, ordering “a Martini” is a ubiquitous pour of Martini & Rossi with a twist and maybe some ice, not to be confused with ordering, say, “a Carpano” or “a Cinzano”. There the Martini Cocktail is mainly a thing they made in hotel bars and casinos for persnickety American travelers, who never knew a damn thing about vermouth, anyways.
†For all the confidence in my declarations in this post, they should be taken with a grain of salt: history is a moving target. But as of this writing, I do feel pretty comfortable about the interpretation.
‡@Splificator and I presented on this topic last year at The Martini Expo, and it appears we will do so again on Sept 27 at Gage & Tollner. See, I can be self-serving, too!
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