When the doors to the Martini Expo swung open at noon, crowds flooded into the space, beelining toward the bar where they were offered a classic gin mini-tini, a wee pink Gibson, or a half-sized lychee martini. As you can imagine, it was the first of what would be many martinis they’d drink that day.
The Martini Expo was created by drinks writer Robert Simonson and Mary Kate Murray, cofounders of The Mix, a cocktail and spirits newsletter. The latest checkpoint in the martini’s long run of cocktail domination, the Expo marks a new era for the classic tipple, one that takes it out of dimly lit bars. In the bright Brooklyn sunshine, cocktail enthusiasts and industry vets were happy to nerd out about vermouth ratios, cocktail luminaries, and various spirit applications, among other things.
“The martini is experiencing arguably its greatest period of popularity since the post-WWII years,” Simonson said of the event. “It seems like the right moment to honor the iconic cocktail.”
Even as Americans are drinking less, and as Gen Z is simply staying home instead of going out to bars, the martini has become more than a drink. It’s a lifestyle.
The daylong event in Brooklyn’s Industry City started with a series of seminars, panels rife with mixology legends like Salvatore Calabrese, Kenta Goto, and Takuma Watanabe. Attendees—a mix of bartenders, cocktail enthusiasts, and other industry insiders—could learn about the history of the martini from cocktail historians David Wondrich and Martin Doudoroff or take a deep dive on vermouth with Allen Katz, cofounder of New York Distilling Company.
Attendees also enjoyed a Martini Mixer Cocktail Party, where a jazz trio suavely thumped away as bartenders at 30 vendor booths shook up every kind of martini you can imagine. Tomato martinis, yuzu martinis, espresso martinis—oh my!
According to ms. franky marshall, a bartender and educator in attendance, the martini’s genius is in its simplicity. “There’s not a lot of clutter,” she says of the cocktail, which allows for near infinite innovation. “A bartender [can] put their own spin on them and the drink itself can keep evolving,” she says.
By five o’clock, the collective martini count was high. Nabil Sarwar and Jack McNeil, two expo-goers from Brooklyn, had polished off nine martinis between them. That’s a lot of alcoho’ (don’t worry they were hydrating too), but for Sarwar, that was the point. “We haven't seen each other for a while,” he says, “and [McNeil] was like, ‘let's drink like old times,’ and I was like, hell yeah I want to get plastered.”
Not everyone at the Martini Expo was a cocktail superfan. “I don't know anything about martinis,” Jake Manabat said. “I'm usually a wine or a vodka soda kind of person.” But after a few seminars (and an undisclosed amount of martinis), Manabat might be a convert. “It's gotten kind of boring to just order a white wine,” he said. “Now I can be a person that says I want a vodka martini, and give me a one to five ratio.”
Is the end of the martini era anywhere in sight?
Not if you ask the slightly tipsy attendees. For them, there’s something of a timeless draw to the martini. “It's urbane, it's cosmopolitan, it's chic, it's expensive,” says Matt Levy, a self-taught mixologist. “It shows that you're making good-ish decisions in your drinking journey.”
That kind of iconic cocktail doesn’t go out of vogue. “It’s like asking will the hamburger go out of style?” Levy says. “Martinis are forever. The martini is infinite.”
As for the Martini Expo itself, there are whispers of recreating the event around the country, but Simonson isn’t confirming anything just yet. “A lot of people suggested at the event that we stage the Expo in other cities,” he says. “We'll make that decision in the new year. Right now, we've got to take a few weeks to rest up and get our strength back. Perhaps a few Martinis can help in that effort.”
