At the corner of Alhambra Avenue and Masonic Street, tucked into the corner of a parking lot, there is a stone with a plaque bolted to it. No bench. No landscaping. Nothing to suggest that a piece of American drinking history supposedly unfolded on that exact patch of asphalt. The plaque says a bartender named Julio Richelieu served the first martini there in 1874, after a miner walked in with a fistful of gold nuggets and asked for something special. It adds, almost as a punchline, that after three or four rounds the "Z" in Martinez started to slur into something shorter.
That marker is the quiet version of a story Martinez tells loudly every September. The September 12 gala was scheduled to give the same claim a much bigger stage, with a band and a lineup of the region's bartenders set to compete at Plaza Ignacio.
Several Versions of Martinez's Martini Legend
The version most residents know goes like this: during the Gold Rush, a miner who'd just struck it rich stopped in Martinez on his way to San Francisco and asked for champagne. The bar didn't have any, so the bartender improvised a substitute he called a "Martinez Special." The miner liked it so much that he kept ordering one by name after he got to the city, and the name eventually wore down into "Martini."
Here's the detail that's easy to miss. The City of Martinez's own history page tells that story without ever committing to a year. The version that gets repeated in outside press accounts pins it to 1849, in the thick of the Gold Rush. The physical plaque at Alhambra and Masonic, put up in 1992 by the Joaquin Murrieta Chapter of E Clampus Vitus, dates the same event to 1874 and names a specific bartender, Julio Richelieu, that the city's own page never mentions. Three tellings of the same founding moment, and no two of them line up. Martinez's martini origin story has circulated for well over a century in versions that differ on the year and the bartender.
The Court Case Nobody Asked For
The most useful thing to know about the party built entirely on this claim is that Martinez didn't just tell the story. It litigated it, sort of. In 1983, San Francisco convened something called the Court of Historical Review, a body with no actual legal authority, to settle the martini's birthplace once and for all. The court ruled that San Francisco was the rightful home of the drink. It might have ended there, except the ruling was handed down in San Francisco, in front of a San Francisco judge, which Martinez treated as reason enough to object. A mock court in Martinez took up the case shortly after and overturned the decision on home turf, awarding the title back to itself.
Neither ruling settled anything, because neither court could actually settle anything. But the fact that two cities staged competing mock trials over a cocktail recipe tells you something real about how seriously this rivalry gets taken locally. As the humorist James Thurber put it on the subject of martinis generally, "one is alright, two is too many, and three is not enough." Martinez has apparently applied that same logic to verdicts.
Why the Argument Still Pays Rent
The plaque at Alhambra and Masonic works precisely because it's understated. It doesn't need to convince anyone of anything in the moment, because across town, the city had planned to make its case a different way, with dinner, live music, and a silent auction. The Martinez Chamber of Commerce has built its Martini Shake-Off into what organizers now bill as the "jewel of East Bay social events," and the martinezmartini.com event page had flagged this year's gala as a likely sell-out.
That's the real shape of the story. Martinez isn't sitting on a passive nickname it picked up once and forgot about. It's an argument the city re-litigates in public every year, with a jury made up of whoever shows up with a ticket.
What the 2026 Gala Was Scheduled to Include
The 2026 Martini Shake-Off Gala was scheduled for Saturday, September 12, from 6 to 10 p.m., with check-in starting at 5:30, at Plaza Ignacio, 525 Henrietta Street in downtown Martinez. The event listing gave these details:
- The event listing said admission would include a full dinner and two drink tickets.
- Local mixologists and bartenders representing their own establishments were scheduled to compete for judged first, second, and third place, plus a separate People's Choice Award voted by guests.
- The listing named 3Day Weekend for live music, with dancing expected through the evening.
- Suggested attire was black tie optional or cocktail, in keeping with the gala's stated aim of recreating the atmosphere of an earlier, more formal era.
If you've lived in Martinez long enough to walk or drive past that unassuming plaque without a second glance, the September 12 gala was scheduled to be a dressed-up version of the same claim. Same argument, different volume.
The Point of All This
None of this needs to matter to your daily life in Martinez, and most days it doesn't. But it's worth knowing that the town's most famous piece of trivia isn't just a fun fact printed on a rock in a parking lot. It's a position the city has defended in a mock courtroom, told at least three slightly different ways across its own records, and now throws an annual black-tie party to keep making. Whether you believe Julio Richelieu poured the first martini in 1874, an unnamed bartender did it in 1849, or the whole thing happened across the water in San Francisco, attending the September 12 gala would have put you on the side that's been arguing longest.
Take a minute when you're downtown to swing by Alhambra and Masonic. It's a strange, small thing to stand in a parking lot and read a plaque about a cocktail, but that contrast, quiet monument on one corner, a gala planned across town, is Martinez in miniature.
For everything else happening in Martinez this fall, from downtown events to what's actually moving in the local housing market, the Lupe Kemper Team keeps a close eye on the neighborhood we've called home for decades. If you're ever curious what your own piece of Martinez is worth, we're always glad to talk.
