I’ll have to try a Martinez. I’ve not actually had Dutch gin.

It’s far from clear exactly what it IS named after, but the “martini”, as a drink, predates Martini and Rossi as a brand and as a name.

However, you are quite correct that, from the beginning, everything that is a decent contender for being the original “martini” has featured vermouth.

The frontrunner for the role of “the orginal martini” is the Martinez cocktail, developed by Jerry Thomas (May His Name Be Hallowed), the father of modern bartending, back in 1862:

Martinez Cocktail.
(Use small bar-glass.)
Take 1 dash of Boker’s bitters.
2 dashes of Maraschino.
1 pony of Old Tom gin.
1 wine-glass of Vermouth.
2 small lumps of ice.

Shake up thoroughly, and strain into a large cocktail
glass. Put a quarter of a slice of lemon in the glass, and serve. If the guest prefers it very sweet, add two dashes of gum syrup.

Boker’s Bitters hasn’t been made in the past hundred years, but it’s supposed to have been somwhat cardamom flavored. Maraschino is probably about the same as it is today. Old Tom gin is sweetened, and sweet genevier is probably as close as we can come to it, today. The vermouth that Jerry Thomas (All Hallow His Name) is talking about is sweet vermouth, not dry vermouth. And gum syrup is what we’d now call simple syrup.

So we’re dealing with a cocktail which the LEAST sweet ingredient is Maraschino.

You can approximate it, today, with Bol’s Genevier, if you can find it (Kappy’s on Rte 1 often has random weird stuff like that, as does Marty’s Liquors in Brookline), sweet vermouth, Maraschino liqueur, and Angastura bitters. I’m drinking one right now, and it’s pretty good.

But it’s NOTHING like a martini in the modern sense. The modern martini wasn’t REALLY developed until, well, after Prohibition, I guess. I mean, you can chart its development as time goes on and all, and you can see how it changed from the sweet dessert-like cocktail that Jerry Thomas (All Must Worship And Hallow His Name) made to the drink that Winston Churchill made by saluting the vermouth from across the room — but I think that it’s not until after Prohibition that you’ve really got the turning point where, if someone gave you something that they called a “martini”, you’d actually get what you were expecting.

Also — just to make sure that we’re clear on this — as much as I HAVE come to terms with “martini” being used as a general category, if I order a martini, I want four parts gin to one part vermouth, shaken with ice, and served with two green olives on a skewer.

However, I am NOT totally unreasonable — I’m willing to accept the olives either with OR without pimentos.