From Snopes:
ISTR hearing that ‘dry’ in a martini referred to the type of vermouth; not the amount of vermouth. Do I recall incorrectly?
I always heard it to mean the amount of vermouth, not the type. Reason being, because it’s the standard to use dry vermouth in a martini, so to make it more dry, one would just use less. I suppose you could order a martini made with sweet cermouth, but the bartender will probably give you a funny look.
And I just feel like saying, that if you like your martinis “super-dry,” (ie, you make some whimsical joke about putting the vermouth bottle next to the shaker and that’s enough vermouth for you,) then you’re not drinking a martini. You’re drinking gin out of a fancy glass. 
No, you’re right. If I’m going to have a martini I fill up a fancy glass with some gin (hopefully Bombay Sapphire or Boodles) and then whisper “vermouth” over the top…
The origin was covered in American Heritage a few years ago.
Essentially, someone invented a drink made of gin and dry vermouth (with some other ingredients that have since been dropped), garnished with an olive. What to call it?
Well, there was already a different drink – made of sweetened gin, sweet vermouth and other ingredients. It was called a martini (origin complicated, but it may have to do with a bartender named “Martinez”). So instead of coming up with a new name, they decided to name the new drink a “dry martini.”
As time passed, the original martini faded out of existance. It was no longer necessary to specify “dry.” Thus the “dry martini” became the martini. Also, less vermouth was added. So what we might call the dry martini today would really be a dry dry martini.
Nope; you’re correct and Snopes is wrong (at least, according to the traditional usage of the term “dry martini”). If you look in older cocktail books you’ll see recipes for martinis vs. dry martinis; they both call for equally large quantities of vermouth–making up as much as 50% of the alcohol in the drink–but the type of vermouth is different.
Of course, the usage may have changed in more recent years, but a quick perusal of Dale DeGroff’s book (which is about as authoritative as anything published recently), doesn’t describe the Snopes usage of the term “dry”.
A guy was planning a trek into the deepest part of the Amazon rain forest. He went over his list of equipment with a knowledgeable friend. When the had finished the friend said, “Great except you forgot the gin and vermouth.”
“Gin and vermouth,” expostulated the guy. “Do you think I’m going to carry the makings of a martini that far when I don’t even like martinis?”
“Oh it’s not to drink,” replied the friend. “Some day you might be hopelessly lost in the forest. You then take out the gin and vermouth and start to make a drink. While you are making it someone is sure to step out of the jungle and say, ‘That’s not how you make a martini.’ and you are saved.”
I opened this thread so I could repeat a joke my father used to tell, and you give me the perfect opening.
A guy walks into a bar and orders a dry martini with just a whisper of vermouth.
The bartender mixes the drink and serves it.
The guy takes one sip, looks at the bartender and says
LOUDMOUTH!
I used to frequent a bar that served martinis so dry that in the men’s room in stead of urinals they had dustbins.
(This (ex) gin drinker used to always think dry martinis were rather silly. If you just want a glass of gin, ask for it!)
There is dry vermouth and sweet vermouth.
In a Martini, dry means little or no dry vermouth, with dryer meaning less vermouth.
In a Manhattan, dry means use dry vermouth instead of sweet vermouth.
Ways not to put vermouth in a dry vodka Martini:
- Indroduce the bottle of vermouth to the bottle of gin or vodka -OR-
- Hold an open bottle of vermouth in front of a fan across the room -OR-
- Throw away the bottle of vermouth (as instructed by Carol Burnett)
I was taught to just think real hard about vermouth.
It’s better to let the shadow of the vermouth bottle, cast by the light from a 60 W incandescent bulb, fall on the gin for exactly 1.78 seconds.
But dry martinis originally did have a significant amount of vermouth, anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2. Nowadays, a 4:1 ratio is still common, and, to me at least, that’s a significant enough amount of vermouth to be a separate drink. I do agree that extra dry martinis tend to be a bit on the silly side.
I consider this the same way I look at the “bison” issue.
Yes, of course they are bison. But if we all call them buffalo then we might as well make it official.
personally, I put vermouth in my Martini, but my goal is to put as little as possible. I’ve had many a bottle of gin over the years but just one bottle of vermouth
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There was the Los Alamos Martini. When the first atomic bomb was tested, they strapped a bottle of vermouth to the bomb. Afterwards, they just held up a glass of gin and let the fallout serve the vermouth.
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An ancient Roman soldier walked into a bar and said to the bartender, “Give me a martinus.”
The bartender replied, “You mean martini?”
The soldier said, “If I wanted more than one, I would have asked for it.”
I know one bar near my home routinely doesn’t include vermouth in its martinis. They use strictly gin, or this other strange beverage of which I have heard, called “vod-ka” or something like that. These martinis are shaken unless the customer requests otherwise.
I’ve made this observation before but it bears repeating, namely, that even without vermouth a shaken martini ends up with a considerable amount of meltwater, so it’s not quite fair to say it’s a glass of straight gin.
An American walked into a bar in Berlin and said, “Dry martini, please.”
The barkeep brought him three.
I make oblique references to the history of aromatized wines in 17th century Aquitaine.
I like the joke, but in reality I do use a pourable amount of vermouth, perhaps on a 1:4 basis.
I see no one’s mentioned the trick of filling the glass full of vermouth, then pouring it out. When I was an undergrad, this impressed the hell out of the bourgeoisie attending a private party when I was conned into tending bar.
Many years ago I took a bartending course in Toronto. One of the instructors told a story that she swore was true as an example of what “real” martini drinkers meant by “dry” (and how nuts they were in general).
Seems a fellow walked into the bar of a friend of hers and offered a $100 tip if he could make a truly “dry” martini. So the bartender put the gin in the glass, dialed a bartender friend of his in Melbourne (Australia) and had him wave the bottle of Vermouth in front of the phone while the Toronto bartender held his glass of gin up to his phone.
The customer dropped the $100 on the bar, drank his drink and walked out.