Even the Great Martini Revival Can’t Save Vermouth

Is there any more maligned partner in the world of cocktails than the vermouth in a Martini?

The aromatized wine has been part of the makeup of the world’s most famous cocktail since the get-go back in the 1880s. It is one of the two necessary ingredients needed for a drink to be called Martini. And yet, it gets no respect. Like Garfunkel in Simon & Garfunkel and Oates in Hall & Oates, its role has been routinely undervalued, discounted, and just plain dismissed.

And here we are in the midst of the biggest Martini revival in generations and, again, vermouth seems to be the loser. But why? And where along the way did it get shunted?

“The Dry Martini is back, with a lot of ‘extra dry’ and ‘in and out’ orders,” says Marcovaldo Dionysos, a veteran bartender in San Francisco, a city with a longstanding reputation as a Martini mecca. Dionysos has worked for such Bay Area cocktail icons as ABV and Comstock Saloon. “Many industry folks still ask for a 50/50 or even wetter, but it’s pretty much limited to F&B folks,” Dionysos says. “I’ve seen a huge uptick in Dirty Martini orders, and requests for blue cheese olives as well. It seems the ‘90s are back.”

The same situation prevails in the nation’s other major metropolises. Zach Ballard, of the newly opened Chicago branch of the London steakhouse chain Hawksmoor, says: “The wet Martini is basically extinct. With vodka Martinis in particular, we get calls for no vermouth — bone dry or dry. For gin Martinis it’s rarer to get calls for no vermouth, but it is almost always dry or extra dry.“ (Typically, vodka Martini drinkers skew dry; they might not be considered Martini drinkers as much as vodka drinkers.)

During a recent weekend at the Hawksmoor in New York, the bar staff was asked several times for a Martini with zero vermouth.

Brian Evans, the beverage director for Sunday Hospitality, the group behind the popular Hotel Chelsea Lobby Bar and other New York properties, says, “At our Bedford Post Tavern up in Westchester County, the clientele have been mostly anti-vermouth since we opened in June 2024.”

What happened? During the aughts and the 2010s, cocktail bartenders and booze writers like myself tried like hell to get vermouth out of the American doghouse and afford it the respect it deserved as a critical cocktail mixer. Can it be that all that vermouth evangelizing was for naught?

To understand the current regression, let’s review the roller-coaster tale of vermouth as it applies to its primary piggyback partner, the Martini.

When the Martini first started showing up on menus and in cocktail books in the 1800s, it was a sweet drink, made of Old Tom gin and sweet vermouth. That vermouth made up a hefty percentage of most recipes, sometimes as much as 50 percent.

“I don’t think most people could tell you the difference between vermouth brands, or even really name any other dry vermouth brands apart from Martini and Noilly Prat.”

By the turn of the 20th century, London dry gin and dry vermouth became the more common mixture (dry vermouth finally reached the U.S. well and cocktails started trending drier at this time), but vermouth continued to hold its own as a prominent player in the cocktail. In 1906 came the first appearance of a “Dry Martini” in a book. Still, a Dry Martini of that era had plenty of vermouth in it; a two-to-one ratio of gin to vermouth, to be exact. (“Dry,” at that time, referred more to the use of London dry gin and dry vermouth than the amount of vermouth in the drink.)

After Prohibition, vermouth’s fortunes began to nosedive. The 1930s were still pretty wet, Martini-wise. But over the ‘40s and ‘50s, the pursuit of the Dry Martini — here now meaning a drink with the merest amount of vermouth — became a mania. People “seasoned” the ice with vermouth. The “In and Out” Martini — in which vermouth was splashed into the glass and then tossed out — arrived. Bartenders traced the lip of a Martini glass with the wetted cork from a vermouth bottle. They used eyedroppers and syringes and “Martini stones” to dispense the vermouth.

There was all sorts of nonsense going on. But the drinkers had their reasons. They wanted a stronger drink. They were after better value, and more gin or vodka meant more booze for your money. Also, vermouth developed a bad reputation because it was mishandled by bartenders, left on the bar top where it could oxidize and spoil.

The hyper-Dry Martini remained the norm until the ‘Tini boom of the 1990s. You’d think this trend would be good news for vermouth. But the “Martinis” being served during this time — Appletinis, Chocolatinis, etc. — rarely contained any vermouth. Often they didn’t have any gin and some didn’t even have vodka. It was a free-for-all.

“The trend toward extremely cold Martinis has made vermouth less desirable for those served at freezer or sub-freezing temperatures. Vermouth loses its nuance and complexity when overly chilled, similar to white wine.”

Vermouth would have been permanently down for the count if not for the enlightened thinking of the leaders of the cocktail revival of the early 21st century, bartenders and bar owners who sought to restore the standing of misused and misunderstood cocktail ingredients. Near the top of their list was vermouth. A proper Martini included vermouth, they proclaimed. And they practiced what they preached. The house Martinis at cocktail destinations like Milk & Honey and Pegu Club were proudly vermouth-heavy. In response, the spirits industry started producing lots of new vermouths, as well as importing venerable vermouth brands that hadn’t seen the U.S. shores in decades.

For 10 years or so, things were good for vermouth. The 50-50 Martini was hip. The rescue operation looked like a success.

And yet, here we are, with vermouth being given the bum’s rush at bars yet again. Why? Well, to be honest, the new gospel on vermouth never really reached most bars across the nation. At the majority of steakhouses, restaurants, and sports bars, both here and abroad, the Dry Martini remained the standard.

“For all the talk about a vermouth renaissance,” says British writer Alice Lascelles, who recently published a book about the Martini, “I don’t think most people could tell you the difference between vermouth brands, or even really name any other dry vermouth brands apart from Martini and Noilly Prat.”

Meanwhile, at the more advanced bar programs, two different trends have worked to erase vermouth’s presence in the current Martini wave. One is the rise in popularity of dirty and savory Martinis. Dirty Martinis rarely contain vermouth, because there is no point; with all that brine, customers don’t notice its presence, so bartenders just leave it out.

Secondly, the popularity of pre-batched freezer Martinis has knocked vermouth down a peg or two.

“The trend toward extremely cold Martinis has made vermouth less desirable for those served at freezer or sub-freezing temperatures,” says Neal Bodenheimer, the owner of several bars in New Orleans, including Cure and Peychaud’s. “Vermouth loses its nuance and complexity when overly chilled, similar to white wine. Additionally, achieving the right texture in very cold Martinis requires careful water dilution, and too much vermouth can disrupt the balance.”

Simon Ford, cocktail industry veteran, creator of Fords Gin, and noted Martini advocate, has noticed the adverse effect of freezer Martinis on vermouth use as well.

“I think that pre-batching and freezing Martinis favors a gin to vermouth ratio that is drier,” he says. “And because more and more bars are pre-batching and freezing their Martinis, we are seeing more and more drier Martinis.”

And so, here we are, in the grips of a perfect storm of trends, all leading to a diminished role of vermouth in today’s Martinis. One final factor that is possibly playing a part is language. In an age where misinformation is king and the average customer’s historical knowledge rarely goes beyond their own adult lifetime, it could be that people are ordering Dry Martinis without knowing what that phrase means.

“I’m not certain that they realize it means less vermouth,” says Brian Nixon, owner of McClellan’s Retreat, a longstanding cocktail bar in Washington, D.C. “I think they’ve just heard it ordered that way, so that’s the way they order it.”

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