When was martini created

During the days of the "Gold Rush", in , a miner struck it rich and was returning to San Francisco. The miner, arriving in Martinez, the first large town he hit, wanted to celebrate. He walked into our leading bar and asked for Champagne, a beverage which was not available.

However, the bartender told him the miner that he had something much better than Champagne and served a drink which the bartender said was a "Martinez Special".

The miner liked the drink and ordered for the house. After he woke up, some time later, he proceeded on to San Francisco where he immediately went to a prominent bar and ordered a "Martinez Special". On the East Coast, however, its rumored origin story takes place in the heart of New York City and involves the wealthy Astor and Rockefeller families.

Scott Fitzgerald and George M. Cohan were frequent guests. It was Rockefeller who was supposedly served an eponymous cocktail by then-bartender Martini di Arma di Taggia. Made with gin, dry vermouth, sweet vermouth, citrus bitters, orange bitters, and garnished with a lemon twist, the original martini recipe is still served at the new bar inside the recently reopened and landmarked Knickerbocker Hotel today. While Astor died in the sinking of the Titanic in , the Knickerbocker Hotel didn't close until , and the building went through several renovations, including a stint as the Newsweek Building in the '40s and '50s.

For you. It suggests that the drink in fact originated in a prominent bar in Martinez, where it was known as a "Martinez Special. The dispute between these two common theories has even gone beyond passing discussion, as the Court of Historical Review in San Francisco determined that the drink had been concocted in San Francisco.

In return, a court in Martinez overturned this decision. Bootleggers were often only a few steps ahead of the authorities, so they didn't have time to put their booze into barrels and wait around for a few years. Instead, they made it quickly and poorly in secret distilleries.

It was often basically poison, and a bad batch could blind or kill the drinker. To make the booze palatable, partiers in the 20s would cut it with other ingredients. The most popular cocktail to arise out of this mess was a heavy-on-vermouth Martini. At that point, the Martini's highest quality ingredient was vermouth.

When prohibition ended, gin started getting better, and the Martini began to dry out. World War II helped.

While it's broadly thought that the Martini is an American invention, the cocktail had, by this time, become popular in Europe. But vermouth was usually made in Italy and France, and as World War II progressed, Britain stopped getting shipments from either of these countries. This did not hamper Churchill's Martini drinking, however. At the time, he quipped, "The only way to make a Martini is with ice-cold gin, and a bow in the direction of France.