Dirty, dry martinis are played out. It’s time to make them wet again.

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Can you think of anything besides a martini that you’d ever want “filthy”? A filthy cabernet. A cheeseburger most foul. Gross milk. This does not work with really any other item than the martini, and if you’ve read a bar menu in the past five years, you’d think dirt is the only thing people want. The classic dirty martini—traditionally made with a splash of olive brine—seems almost quaint now, as iterations with olive oil, MSG, olive and tomato vermouths, and other savory ingredients have proliferated. The buzzy Corner Store restaurant in Manhattan even serves “The Filth,” a version that eschews vermouth entirely for just vodka and puckeringly salty brine.

Maybe it’s my fault for following a trend instead of just ordering the thing I wanted. I gave it an honest shot, but the few times I’ve caved for a dirty martini have made me feel as if I’m drowning in a vat at a pickle factory, hoping my death at least catalyzes the writing of The Jungle 2: Now With More OSHA Violations. Once, upon realizing my mistake, I surreptitiously siphoned martini from my mouth into my water glass until the martini glass was empty and I could order some white wine. It has come to the point where I tend to skip over any cocktail bar’s martini offering, assuming I’ll just be forcing myself through mouthfuls of burning cold vinegar.

But color me relieved when, on a recent night out, I discovered that the bar’s martini offering was fresh and clean, made with rhubarb and a combination of lighter gins. Or, a few weeks later, when I found that the only martini variation on a menu was the Vesper, which includes both gin and vodka but uses sweeter, floral Lillet Blanc in place of the dry vermouth. Or when I went to a bistro and the only option was a reverse martini, which flips it into a vermouth drink with a splash of gin. Could it be we’re turning a corner and the pendulum is swinging back toward sweeter, wetter martinis? If so, thank God. I’m ready for the brine-based suffering to be over.

The martini is always a cool and elegant choice, 90 percent about the glass it’s served in, because otherwise an extra-dry martini is just a gigantic shot. The popularity of the dirty variation over the past few years could possibly be chalked up to the overall olive and pickle trend that’s taken a corner of the food world by storm, resulting in everything from olive hair clips to Sonic’s Picklerita Slush. Robert Simonson theorized in Grub Street that the dirty versions proliferated because “people don’t really like the taste of alcohol,” but if that’s true, then drinkers have an odd way of showing it by ordering vodka and salt. There was also the Negroni season of 2021—centering a drink that couldn’t possibly taste more like alcohol—with dirty martinis perhaps taking up the mantle of all our more bitter desires.* Whatever it was, “dirty or extra-dry martinis were pretty much all the martinis I was making pre-lockdown. They were mostly 3 ounces of cold vodka,” says Sam Kiley, the bar manager at Dovetail, in New Orleans.

But Dovetail’s current menu features a Vesper variation, and a 50/50 Martinez, essentially a martini made with sweet vermouth, with equal parts gin and Punt e Mes. And according to Kiley, like Fernet and the Snaquiri and, yes, the Negroni before it, these wetter variations on bar menus are being driven by bartenders. “We’ve all been drinking 50/50s, wet martinis, and reverse martinis for years,” says Kiley. “I think what we’re seeing is the kind of trend where you have a drink that’s beloved to bartenders, and once you build that trust with your guests, you show them what it is that you enjoy drinking.”

So what makes these preparations sing to the bartender heart? Traditionally, most vermouths came from Italy, or maybe from France. But there’s a bit of a vermouth renaissance going on, with more varieties from Spain, Japan, and even the U.S. becoming available. That’s allowed bartenders to geek out over vermouth-forward martinis, experimenting with different flavors; no one is stuck with the same dusty bottle of Dolin. “I think the quality of the cocktail ingredients have really changed the way people are drinking,” says Luis Hernandez, director of food and beverage at Hello Hello, in Manhattan. “Vermouth is no longer oxidizing sitting on the shelf and is now being refrigerated, and we have better ingredients and techniques all around.” (Reader: If your vermouth is currently sitting out on your home bar, it’s time to get a new bottle and put it in the fridge!)

The 50/50 martini and the French martini riffs on the Hello Hello menu “cater to cocktails drinkers, not just martini drinkers,” says Hernandez. And according to Kiley, these martinis are popular because they’re easier to drink. They’re not low ABV, but they are slightly lower than their extra-dry cousins, and they often feature slightly sweeter or more-herbal notes that don’t require you to brace for impact.

I do not think it is radical to want to avoid suffering, especially while eating. Americans, in general, famously have an unadventurous palate for textures and flavors celebrated in other parts of the world. And it seems that when we do, as a society, embrace something like bitterness, it is only as an extreme challenge, daring one another to eat the hottest pepper or make the IPA that tastes most like a moldy towel. The rise of the dirty martini followed this pattern, almost immediately becoming a matter of superlatives, the dirtiest, briniest, most intense. This isn’t about acquiring a taste. It is a fetishization of displeasure, insisting that you must not really like martinis, or beers, or hot sauce unless there is some sort of pain involved.

Am I wrong not to want to brace? I am braced all day. I want to unclench. I want to slip into something comfortable. When I say we don’t need to invite more unpleasantness into our lives, I am gesturing toward the State of the World, yes, but it is also just a statement about taste buds. This is a cocktail, for God’s sake, the thing that is supposed to make you text your friends “I am so lucky to hav u beautiful” and then put on Céline Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and air drum your way into the Uber. Why should the phrase easy drinking be an insult? Drinking should be easy!

Olive brine isn’t going back in the jar, and godspeed to all of you beautiful horses who want your cocktails to taste like a salt lick. But personally, I am embracing the elegance and ease of the wet martini, metaphorically and literally. I’m bitter enough these days—I don’t need more vinegar to go with it.