The martini is probably the most classic cocktail of all time. But Robert Simonson is willing to take it one step further. According to the prominent booze author and Substacker, it’s undoubtedly the greatest drink the world has ever known. He devoted an entire book to bolstering his case and won a top industry award for his efforts. Now he’s hosting a first-of-its-kind convention in celebration of the tipple: Martini Expo. It’s coming to Brooklyn this autumn. Here’s everything you need to know about the weekend-long confab.
The event officially kicks off on the evening of September 12 at Confidant, where three courses of New American cuisine will be served accompanying a trio of martinis. But the bulk of the activities unfold a day later inside the adjacent Industry City exhibition center along the Sunset Park waterfront. Beginning at noon attendees will get to navigate no less than seven seminars led by some of the brightest stars in bartending—and some of the most cherished chroniclers of cocktail culture. Topics range from unpacking the 19th century origins of the drink, with authors David Wondrich and Martin Doudoroff, to highlighting its modern day renaissance in Japanese-American cocktail bars, by the folks who run three of the most popular examples: Masahiro Urushido, Kenta Goto, and Takuma Watanabe.
“The martini is the only cocktail that could support an entire convention all by itself,” Simonson tells Men’s Journal. “There's so much history to it, so many variations and variables. Since the drink was born in the 1880s, people have never tired of discussing and debating it. There's an entire culture that surrounds the drink.”
Courtesy Robert Simonson
And if you want to get granular on that culture you’ve clearly come to the right place. Allen Katz, co-founder of New York Distilling, will spend several hours dissecting the significance of vermouth in proper martini preparation. James Beard Award-winning author Dave Arnold will wax poetic on the age-old debate of shaken vs. stirred. Spirits expert Keli Rivers opines on the controversial topic of gin or vodka as base ingredient.
If you hold a strong opinion on any of the above, or you thirst for a deeper understanding of the cocktail and its enduring lore, these seminars alone could likely justify the $150 price of admission. But you’re actually accessing much more than that with your ticket. Namely: good food and, oh yes, plenty of martinis to match. After the educational bit is over, celebrity chef George Motz will be on hand serving up his Instafamous burgers, while a handful of cocktail book authors sign copies of their respective tomes.
The event concludes with a three-hour-long “Martini Mixer Cocktail Party” where a weekend’s worth of meditations on the drink converge with expert execution. Relying predominantly on sophisticated gins from the likes of Fords and Farmer’s, industry icons including Dale DeGroff, Julie Reiner, and Phil Ward will be whipping up their drinkable treatises on the curriculum at hand.
The fact that so many of these legends all work and live throughout the five boroughs underscores why this event had to take place in New York and nowhere else. According to Simonson, the martini has been experiencing a heyday ever since the pandemic—a glory period unlike any other in its 150-year history. And the Big Apple is the epicenter of that revival. “There are easily a couple dozen places here that have partly built their reputations around how they make and serve their martini,” he says. But that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to take this show on the road.
“Almost everyone I've mentioned The Martini Expo to has said: how has this not happened before? And, this should be an annual thing. The latter hadn't actually occurred to me. I conceived of the event as a one-off. But, if it goes well, why not? Chicago, San Francisco, London—there are a lot of martinis towns in this world.”
Tickets for the inaugural Martini Expo can be purchased here.
Related: I’m a Martini Pro. Here’s How to Perfectly Batch Freezer Martinis Every Time
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