The Dry Century

The Martinez of the 1880s was, by modern standards, a dessert: Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino, bitters. When drinkers of the 1890s began ordering it “dry”, they were voting for a new kind of drink — one that tasted of structure rather than syrup.

The century that followed is a ratio chart. 1900s recipes call for equal parts. The 1930s move to 3:1. Post-war America reaches 8:1, then absurdity: Churchill’s glance across the room, the atomizer, the bartender’s joke about keeping the bottle in the fridge, unopened.

Each decade’s dryness read as sophistication. A wet Martini was naive; a desert-dry one meant you had arrived. The drink became a class marker disguised as a glass.

The craft revival of the 2000s reversed the arrow. Bartenders discovered vermouth again — good vermouth, kept cold — and the ratio settled somewhere honest: 5:1, sometimes 3:1, occasionally the full-throated 50:50. The lesson travelled further than the drink: a cocktail is an argument between ingredients, and the Martini’s century was spent learning that both sides deserved to speak.