Is that 116 proof?
I thought it was 100.
I couldn’t decide if it was a zero with a slash or an 8. Beefeater has gone from 94 proof to 80. A big disappointment, but I still like the taste.
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I’ve had a great time reading this thread and have learned a lot.
Major confession: I’ve never had a proper martini. Only an espresso martini, which doesn’t really count (I look at it as more of a dessert than a drink).
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Are you going to try one? You could start with a Martinez to ease into it 
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To many of us a vodka martini is not a martini either and neither is a Vesper. I am not knocking either, merely underscoring the traditional nomenclature, even if it falls into greater disregard. It is clearly time for you to take the plunge. I hope you have a gin you really like. Most people who have never had a martini have limited familiarity with gin and virtually no familiarity with dry vermouth. Dry vermouth can range from very assertive to very subtle. I like the subtlety of Dolin dry. Not all white vermouths are dry. Some are quite sweet. While some may like that in a martini, I find it off putting when I am expecting a bracing martini. Gin has a pretty vast range. Some are very complex, often highlighting some rather unusual flavors (one of my favorites finishes on a note of sugar kelp!), and the common theme among many London dry gins is a clean, junipery taste backed by citrus with other botanicals fading more into the background. There is a website called The Gin Is In that has a nifty graph to show the balances of quite a lot of different gins.
Even devoted martini lovers often take issue with the ways many bartenders make martinis. There are widely diverging views on things like: Shaken or stirred? Olive or twist? Ratio of gin to vermouth? Dash of orange bitters? Some bartenders and home martini makers like to use frozen spirits and little to no ice, and others (like me) believe that the small amount of melt water produced by shaking or stirring is an important part of the drink.
Instead of filling your liquor cabinet with unknowns by buying and sampling gins, I would suggest you go to a bar you like, order a martini, and specify gin, some dry vermouth, and shaken, even though many would find that heretical. A shaken martini may be a more approachable style, always cold and with a bit of melt water. (Advocates of stirring say shaking bruises the botanicals (on which I call BS), and that stirring preserves the beautiful clarity (true, but the aeration induced cloudiness lifts very quickly.)) My issue with ordering a stirred martini in a bar is that too many bartenders lack the patience to stir sufficiently, but they can produce a passable result very quickly with a shaker. Start with a well known London dry like Beefeater or Tanqueray or with a popular “modern” gin like Hendrick’s or Bombay Sapphire (of which I am not a fan, but it sure seems popular). I much prefer (my favorite) original Bombay red cap. For martini number two, presumably at the same bar, go from London dry to modern, or vice versa. Another option, especially if you try London dry first and like it, is a gin that is modern but only to a degree, retaining the juniper forward and secondary citrus profile. St. George Botanivore, the Botanist, and Citadelle come to mind and are usually available.
This initial experiment will help you confirm if martinis appeal to you and give you a baseline on
the balance of botanicals. From there you can use the charts on The Gin Is In to start fine tuning your preferences.
My wife and I devoted our COVID evenings to tinkering with martinis. I will not insist you try our selection, but I commend it as a fun exercise. If you go to a bar to begin this process, I strongly suggest stopping at two. Going beyond two runs a risk of crashing your hard drive and losing your data.
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This is excellent, well-reasoned advice.
Thank you so much. I am always aware that my coffee fueled early morning reveries can be overly pedantic and/or verbose. My evening gin fueled reveries usually get deleted. 
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This advocate of stirring has no idea how you even tell if a botanical is bruised, but vigorous shaking often produces ice shards that ruin a martini for me. So I stir.
ETA: And this is the second time I’ve made this point in this thread. Still valid!
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Hilarious. I relate.
Thanks for this advice! I might try a bar first - we have one nearby where the bartender probably won’t be rushed off their feet and I can ask about/for specifics.
I live, seemingly, in the land of gin and tonics. So martinis have never been on my radar much. But gin is very much a thing. We have a couple of well regarded local ones:
I usually drink gin with tonic, so am probably not getting the real flavour of the gin itself.
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Maybe I’ve just been incredibly lucky in my bar choices, but I’ve never had a bartender be too impatient to stir my martini properly.
@medgirl, I highly recommend you start with a stirred GIN martini — always gin, unless you’re just drinking to get drunk.
If you prefer a sweeter drink like espresso martini, my earlier recommendation to start with a martinez would be a great way to get your feet wet.
Or you could go with milder gins like Nolet’s, which has distinct raspberry notes for me, or Roku, a very inoffensive Japanese gin.
Looking forward to hearing about your experience 
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I went and searched the bar menu for the place I was thinking of going to - yikes, no classic martini on the menu at all, only espresso and passion fruit vodka based ‘martinis’.
Looked up the bar menu at The Briny, a seafood-forward restaurant we like locally. It seems to have better options:
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There ya go. If your drinking partner is up for it, you could even order a shaken vodka martini and a stirred gin martini, then vice versa to compare
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I hear ya on the ice shards. I rarely encounter them but they belong under a shrimp cocktail, not in a martini.
Sometimes bartenders get a little over-excited. At home, I might shake, but I’m judicious about it.
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Today is World Martini Day!
