From Cosmos to Lemon Drops: 10 Recipes That Prove '90s Martinis Are Back

What goes around, comes around—and that's particularly true for '90s nostalgia, which is huge right now. Browse any social media platform, and you'll spy plenty of cargo pants, low-rise jeans, crop tops, and tiny backpacks. Dunkaroos and Lunchables are back, and so are the trendy cocktails of that era.

There's an established theory of a 30-year pendulum, when pop culture trends tend to re-emerge. The reason for that? It takes about that length of time for young people—who were the consumers of culture—to become the creators of culture. Today's bartending stars grew up during the '90s martini craze, and while some of them may have been too young to imbibe back then, now they're putting their own stamp on those libations with delicious results.

A quick refresher on the martini fad of the '90s: These drinks didn't have much to do with the classic martini (a simple cocktail made with gin and dry vermouth). In the '90s, anything in a conical V-shaped glass could be dubbed a "-tini." Vodka dominated as the base spirit; it disappeared into the background and better showed off the colorful syrups and fruity liqueurs that characterized many '90s martinis, including the Appletini. And then came Carrie Bradshaw and company. When these pop culture icons started sipping Cosmopolitans on Sex and the City, those tuning in started going out to local bars and ordering a Cosmo.

As the '90s came to a close, so did the cocktails that were so iconic of the era. Bitter cocktails replaced the sugary sweet ones, gin came back, and bourbon drinks, like the old fashioned, became all the rage as speakeasy-style bars and the fascination with pre-Prohibition-era options swept the United States.

But it looks like cocktail drinkers are now craving the easygoing vodka-based drinks popular before the turn of the millenium. The first '90s cocktail to make a big comeback? The espresso martini. In 2021, Yelp's data science team reported a 300 percent increase in mentions of this buzzy cocktail, and in 2022, Nielsen reported that it had become one of the 10 most-ordered cocktails in the U.S. Other martinis emblematic of the '90s followed closely behind. Many of them have been re-imagined by bartenders who have access to fresher ingredients and more sophisticated liqueurs than the first generation of these drinks utilized.

Ready to take a sip back in time? Here are some of the '90s martinis we think are worth revisiting.