How to Make a Dry Martini at Home (Without Overthinking It)
Three ingredients. Two, if you don’t count the ice. And yet people stand in front of the bottles like they’re defusing something.
Here’s the thing I’ve learnt from making a few thousand of these. The dry martini isn’t difficult. It’s just honest. There’s no lime juice covering your tracks, no sugar syrup smoothing the edges. Whatever you put in the glass is what you drink. Good gin tastes good. Warm gin tastes like regret.
Most of what people think they know about this drink came from a spy with a gun and a very specific way of ordering. We’ll get to him.
So let’s make a dry martini together. I’ll tell you the rules, then I’ll tell you which ones I break.
What a Dry Martini Actually Is
A dry martini is gin and dry vermouth, stirred cold, strained into a chilled glass, finished with a lemon twist or an olive. The word “dry” refers to the vermouth style, and these days it usually means less of it. That’s the whole drink. Everything else is preference dressed up as tradition.
The International Bartenders Association puts the classic build at 60 ml gin to 10 ml dry vermouth, stirred over ice, garnished with lemon peel or a green olive. That’s your foundation. It’s a good one.
Where it gets personal is the vermouth. A wetter martini has more of it. A drier one has less. People will argue about this at your dinner table, and they’ll be having a lovely time doing it. Let them.
What You Need Behind Your Home Bar
You need four things: gin worth drinking, vermouth that hasn’t gone off, ice that doesn’t smell like last week’s fish, and a glass you’ve had the sense to chill. No shaker required. No special kit. A jug and a spoon will do.
- 60 ml London dry gin
- 10 ml dry vermouth
- Plenty of hard, fresh ice
- A lemon twist or a decent green olive
- Optional: one dash of orange bitters
The gin does the heavy lifting. Juniper, citrus peel, a bit of spice, some structure underneath it all. That’s what you’re tasting.
Vermouth is where most home bars come unstuck. It’s wine. Wine goes off. Once you open that bottle it lives in the fridge, and it does not live there forever. Six weeks, maybe eight. If it smells flat or a little sour, tip it out. A tired vermouth will ruin an excellent gin, and you’ll blame the gin.
Orange bitters are optional and slightly wonderful. One dash adds a thread of citrus without a hint of sweetness. Try it once before you decide.
The Ratio Argument, Settled (Sort Of)
Ratio controls the entire drink. Less vermouth gives you something sharp, cold and spirit-forward. More vermouth gives you a rounder, softer, more aperitif-shaped cocktail. Both are correct. The wrong ratio is simply the one you don’t want to finish.
Start here, the IBA build:
- 60 ml gin
- 10 ml dry vermouth
Crisp, clean, properly dry. This is what most people mean when they order one.
Want it gentler? Go to 15 ml of vermouth. The drink opens up, the finish softens, and it stops feeling like a dare. I pour it this way for anyone drinking their first martini.
Want it old-school? Try 60 ml gin, 30 ml dry vermouth, one dash of orange bitters. Australian Bartender works in this broader territory, and it’s closer to how the drink was made a century ago. Rounder. Herbal. Genuinely delicious.
Then there’s the crowd who rinse the glass with vermouth, tip it out and call the job done. That’s not a martini. That’s cold gin with a rumour attached.
How to Make a Dry Martini, Step by Step
Cold and clean. Those are the only two things that separate a good martini from a great one. Get the temperature right and the technique steady, and the gin will do the rest without any help from you.
Chill the Glass First
Put your glass in the freezer for ten minutes before you touch a bottle. No freezer space? Fill it with ice and water while you build the drink, then tip it out.
Skip this and the first sip arrives lukewarm. Nothing else you do afterwards will fix that.
Measure the Gin and Vermouth
Pour 60 ml gin and 10 ml dry vermouth into a mixing glass. Use a jigger. Free-pouring looks marvellous and works beautifully for a gin and tonic, but a stray five millilitres of vermouth changes this drink noticeably.
Fill It With Good Ice
Fresh, hard cubes, right to the top. Old freezer ice carries the smell of everything it’s been sitting next to, and a martini has absolutely nowhere to hide it.
More ice melts slower. That sounds backwards, so here’s the short version: a full mixing glass chills faster and waters down less.
Stir for Twenty to Thirty Seconds
Stir until the outside of the mixing glass feels properly, uncomfortably cold. Twenty seconds is the minimum. Thirty is better.
Yes, you’re diluting it. That’s the point. Water is an ingredient here, not a mistake. Without it the drink tastes hot and mean.
Strain, Garnish, Serve
Strain into your frozen glass. It should look clear, still and slightly viscous, like cold silk.
Express a lemon twist over the surface, run the peel around the rim, drop it in. Or spear a good olive on a pick. Then take it to the person who’s waiting, immediately. A martini has a short and glorious life.
Lemon Twist or Olive?
The garnish changes the mood more than the recipe. A twist makes the drink brighter and more aromatic, because the oils sit on top and reach you before the gin does. An olive pushes it savoury, saline and a touch more serious. Neither is wrong. Both are traditional.
I reach for lemon with citrus-forward gins. It sharpens everything without adding weight.
An olive earns its place in a very cold, very dry martini, particularly near the bottom of the glass where the brine starts to show. Use a decent olive. A sad supermarket one will cloud a beautiful drink, and you’ll wonder what went wrong.
If the savoury version is calling you, the Dirty Martini recipe on our site takes it further with olive brine, and it works with either Courthouse Gin or our Barrel Aged Vodka.
Shaken or Stirred? Stir It
Stir it. Shaking chills faster, sure, but it whips air through the drink and leaves it cloudy, with tiny ice shards floating about. Save the shaker for anything with citrus, egg white or cream.
Stirring keeps the martini clear and silky. It chills and dilutes at the same steady pace, without roughing anything up. The IBA calls for a mixing glass, and so do I.
That being said, hospitality isn’t a courtroom. If someone adores a shaken martini, pour them a shaken martini and enjoy their company. Just don’t tell me you learnt it here.
About That Line
Every bartender alive has heard it. Somebody leans on the bar, drops their voice half an octave, and orders it shaken, not stirred. We smile. We’ve smiled roughly nine thousand times.
Two small facts spoil the party. The first is that the drink Bond keeps ordering on screen is usually built on vodka, not gin, which puts it a fair distance from the classic dry martini. The second is that shaking a spirit-only cocktail is, technically, the wrong call. Air, cloud, ice chips. All the things we’ve just spent five paragraphs avoiding.
None of which has dented the line’s popularity by a single degree. Fair enough, honestly. It’s a wonderful thing to say out loud.
The Vesper, If You’re Curious
Ian Fleming did give Bond one genuinely great drink, and it wasn’t the vodka martini. The Vesper appears in the first novel: gin, vodka and Kina Lillet, shaken, finished with a large twist of lemon peel.
Kina Lillet hasn’t been made for decades, so the modern version leans on Lillet Blanc and comes out softer than Fleming intended. Shaken, though. Always shaken. If you’re going to break the rule, break it deliberately and name the drink after someone.
Make one with Courthouse Gin and the orange citrus does something rather lovely against the lemon peel.
The Gin Question
Since the gin is nearly all of the drink, this is the only decision that really matters. A martini frames the spirit. It doesn’t disguise it. So pick a bottle you’d happily sip on its own, and the cocktail mostly makes itself.
For a Melbourne martini, I start with Courthouse Gin. It’s sweet and earthy across the palate, with coconut and orange citrus running underneath, and it was built with classics like the Martini and Negroni in mind. The citrus in it makes a lemon twist feel inevitable rather than optional.
Here’s the quiet test for any gin. Make the drink, take the first sip without food, and ask what you’re tasting. If the answer is only “cold” and “strong,” something in the build needs work. You should get botanicals opening slowly, vermouth sitting politely in the background, and citrus oil on the nose. That’s the drink working properly.
Still deciding? Have a wander through the gin range before you commit to a bottle, or come and taste through it with us at the cellar door at 92 Errol Street, North Melbourne. Tasting side by side teaches you more in twenty minutes than a month of reading.
What to Drink It With
Serve it before dinner and keep the food salty and simple. The martini is strong, cold and appetite-sharpening, which is exactly what an aperitif should do.
Oysters. Salted almonds. Good crisps. Anchovy toast. Olives, obviously.
One more thing: don’t batch these for a party unless you know your dilution numbers cold. A freshly stirred martini has a texture you cannot fake. Make them one at a time and let people watch. Half the pleasure is in the ritual.
Fancy something richer once the martini hour has passed? Pour an After Dark Negroni, made with Yam Daisy Gin, bitter orange and sweet vermouth. It’s ready to go, which by that point in the evening is a mercy.
The House Recipe
Ingredients
- 60 ml Courthouse Gin or London dry gin
- 10 ml dry vermouth
- Ice
- Lemon twist or green olive
- Optional: 1 dash orange bitters
Method
- Chill a martini glass or coupe in the freezer.
- Add gin and vermouth to a mixing glass.
- Fill it with fresh, hard ice.
- Stir 20 to 30 seconds, until very cold.
- Strain into the chilled glass.
- Garnish with a lemon twist or a green olive.
- Serve straight away.
Lemon for a brighter finish, olive for a savoury one. With Courthouse Gin, I’d start with lemon and see where it takes you.
Restraint Is the Whole Trick
Learning to make a dry martini is really learning when to stop. Buy gin you love. Respect the vermouth. Freeze the glass. Stir with intent. Then leave the drink alone.
Change one thing at a time and you’ll find your version within a week. Wetter, drier, brighter, saltier. It becomes yours somewhere around the fourth attempt, which is a very pleasant thing to have to practise.
We took our name from a bloke in a white dinner jacket raising a glass in Casablanca, so we’re hardly in a position to lecture anyone about drinking cinematically. Order it however you like. Just stir the gin one.
Send this to the friend who insists theirs is the best martini in the room. Then browse the gin range and settle the argument properly or sign up to our Here’s Looking at You Crew monthly gin club and learn how to make this and many other cocktails with everything you need delivered each month!
