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. This Saturday, the same claim gets a much bigger stage. White tents go up around the fountain at Plaza Ignacio, a band plays, and a lineup of the region's bartenders competes to prove, once again, that the city is right.
A Legend the City Can't Quite Keep Straight
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 has spent well over a century defending an origin story it has never quite pinned down itself, which somehow makes the defense more stubborn, not less.
The Court Case Nobody Asked For
The most useful thing to know before you show up to a 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 is making 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 this year's gala, on the martinezmartini.com event page, is already flagged 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 Actually Happens This Saturday
The 2026 Martini Shake-Off Gala runs 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. A few practical details worth knowing before you decide whether to go:
- Hosted by the Martinez Chamber of Commerce, the gala includes a full dinner and two drink tickets with admission.
- Local mixologists and bartenders representing their own establishments compete for a judged first, second, and third place, plus a separate People's Choice Award voted by guests.
- Live music comes from 3Day Weekend, with dancing expected to run through the evening.
- Suggested attire is black tie optional or cocktail, in keeping with the gala's stated aim of recreating the atmosphere of an earlier, more formal era.
- The event has a track record of selling out, so anyone planning to attend should get tickets through the Chamber's site sooner rather than later.
If you've lived in Martinez long enough to walk or drive past that unassuming plaque without a second glance, Saturday is the version of the same claim dressed up for a night out. 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, showing up Saturday puts you on the side that's been arguing longest.
If you're heading downtown for the gala, take a minute beforehand 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, full production across town, is Martinez in miniature. The city doesn't need the story to be airtight. It just needs to keep telling it a little louder than the last time.
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.
