martinez bell-ringer

1/2 wineglass Gin (1 oz Wireworks)
1/2 wineglass Sweet Vermouth (1 oz Cocchi)
1/2 tsp Lemon Juice
1 tsp Simple Syrup
2 dash Orange Bitters (Regan's)
1 dash Peychaud's Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a glass rinsed with 1/2 tsp apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter). Rub a piece of fresh cut lemon around the edge of the glass.

After the Rye Crusta, I decided to keep the drinks in an older style and reached for Maloney's The Twentieth-Century Cocktail Guide for Mixing Fancy Drinks first published in 1900. With a little extra lemon juice left over from the Crusta, I narrowed my choices down to something that would utilize this and picked the Martinez Bell-ringer. Like the Manhattan Bell-ringer, this stirred drink contained a bit of lemon juice perhaps for brightness or fruitiness. The bell-ringer aspect is Maloney's signature move -- a rinse with apricot liqueur that he used in a wide variety of drinks.
The apricot rinse added to the nose along with the lemon from the rim and herbal notes including anise and juniper from the gin and bitters. The sweet vermouth flavors filled the sip, and the swallow offered gin, followed by apricot, and finishing with herbal notes. Overall, the Martinez Bell-ringer was softer and different from the better recognized Maraschino-containing Martinez. There were Martinez recipes that lost out that contain curaçao instead of Maraschino, and with the extra citrus elements, Maloney's drink shares some similarity with that history. Indeed, the Martinez was often described as a Manhattan made with gin instead of whiskey, and it was only later standardized (except for gin to vermouth ratio) as a Maraschino and orange bitters containing drink.