Martini is a brand of Italian drinks, named after the Martini & Rossi Distilleria Nazionale di Spirito di Vino, in Turin.
History
Clemente Michel, Carlo Re, Carlo Agnelli and Eligio Baudino started the company in 1847, as a vermouth bottling plant in Pessione (A small village near Turin). A few years later Alessandro Martini joined the team, becoming the director in 1863 along with Teofilo Sola and Luigi Rossi (who was the inventor of a vermouth). In 1863, they changed the company name to Martini, Sola & Cia. They started exporting bottles of vermouth around the world. New York city was given its first crates in 1867. At the time the firm was awarded several prizes, which are still recorded on the bottles: Dublin (1865), Paris (1867 and 1878), Vienna (1873) and Philadelphia (1876). Just thirty years after its creation, Martini was available in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Egypt and other countries. In 1879, the Sola family sold its interests to the remaining partners, who renamed the company Martini & Rossi, as it stands today.
The brand may have given the American martini vermouth and gin cocktail its name (an early recipe for which is known from 1888), though other speculations on the cocktail's etymology exist.[1][2]