Retro hedonism in a glass: why 2022 was the year of the martini
The simple cocktail is above all the drink of nostalgia – for a time before we felt judged, hopeless and tired
This year, the martini was inescapable, the chosen lubricant for the age of retro pastiche – a moment governed by e-commerce aesthetes, for whom Mad Men is less a meditation on desire than a brochure for mid-century credenzas.
Gen Z flocked to geriatric hotel bars resurrected by TikTok and selfied their cheese-stuffed olives. The espresso version kept ageing millennials awake past their bedtime, helping recapture the jouissance of their 20s, if only for an hour. Rivers of gin flecked with vermouth flowed from the world’s cosmopolitan centers out to its hinterlands. In April, a New York Magazine piece declared a martini “boom”, with bartenders agog at just how many their customers were pounding. A high-end beverage consultant I spoke with said private clients had been asking for “martini-only parties”. In November, the CGA cocktail tracker, which measures the most popular cocktails in the US, saw the martini soar into third place, leapfrogging the once popular Manhattan. The espresso martini also rose five places in the rankings, the biggest jump of any cocktail.
