Let's Talk About Vermouth
What is it? Why is it so important? How is it used? On this entry of The Reluctant Bartender, we'll try to answer these questions and more.
Greetings, Reluctant Bartenders!
Today we want to talk to you about vermouth. There’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what vermouth is, how to use it, how to store it, and even how it’s made.
Let’s dive in and with a little luck, by the end of this column we will have a better understanding of vermouth, and also why it’s introduction to the U.S. market was one the most impactful things—if not the single the most impactful thing—to happen in the history of cocktails in the U.S.
A Drink With a Clear History
One of the things that is interesting about Vermouth compared to many other alcoholic drinks—whiskey, wine, brandy, beer, whatever—is that we can accurately trace its history.
For many spirits like whiskey, trying to trace its origins is a fools errand. The deeper you dig, the more the truth slips through your fingers, lost to time.
Even if you narrow your focus—let’s say instead of trying to understand the entire history of whiskey, we limit the inquiry to just the history of rye whiskey in the United States—it is still impossible to uncover a defining moment when a specific person, or group, did some thing that you could point to and say “this is where it began.”
By contrast, the history of vermouth is fairly well known. We can trace the origins of sweet vermouth back to a town in Italy named Torino (you may remember that Turin, the proper Italian word for Torino, hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics).
Torino is a beautiful city in the North of Italy, west of Milan and about 75 miles from the French border. Torino is the capital city of the Piedmont region of Italy, and Piedmont has a rich history of wine making and grape growing.
The cultural significance of Torino is important, especially in the 18th century. Torino’s proximity to France and Switzerland meant there was a lot of cross-cultural influence on the city, and the Italian port of Genoa just to the southeast was easily accessible, providing access to exotic spices from afar.
These cross cultural influences, combined with a rich history of wine making, and a culturally important, wealthy city with miles of walkable—often covered—streets led to the creation of the apertivo. Think of an aperitivo as a drink you would have in the late afternoon, before dinner, but apertivo is more than just a type of drink. Socially, it became an event across the city, a time each day when when people would gather and discuss the day’s events one of the many sidewalk cafes throughout the city.
The Italian version of England’s “afternoon tea,” if you will.
It is here in Torino in the 1780’s that a local wine shop, owned by a man named Señor Marendazzo, was in need of some help. Marendazzo hired a young shop assistant named Antonio Benedetto Carpano. Remember that name.
Our readers familiar with vermouth, or perhaps the recipe we shared here for The Manhattan will recognize that last name as belonging to one of our recommended vermouths.
In 1786, the young Carpano created a wine based on a long-held family recipe, using wormwood as a battering agent, and combined with newfound spices imported to Torino from the port of Genoa. Carpano called his new formulation vermut, the German word for wormwood. His boss, Señor Marendazzo was so impressed, he allowed his assistant to sell the drink in his shop.
Importantly, the drink caught the attention of Duke Vittorio Amedeo III. The Duke gave it two Italian thumbs up, and insisted on more. Now that Carpano’s vermut was both commercially available via the wine shop and had a royal endorsement, the popularity of the drink skyrocketed. Carpano eventually purchased the wine shop from his boss, while across the city and the region many new formulations of vermut sprang up to quench local demand for the drink as an aperitivo.
If you’re curious about the history of aromatized wines from which vermouth sprung, here’s a very good article at Spirits Beacon that will lead you far down the rabbit hole.
Cool History—But What is Vermouth?
Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter. Vermouth is basically a wine—an aromatized and fortified wine. But still, a wine.
Aromatized means that the wine has had aromatics—herbs, spices, botanicals, and more—added to increase flavor complexity.
Fortified means that spirits such as brandy have been added to the wine to increase the alcohol percentage, helping to stabilize the wine and in some instances to add flavor.
This is an important distinction—remember, vermouth is a wine not a liquor. As such it has a much shorter shelf life once opened than a distilled liquor like brandy or whiskey.
Whereas regular wine, once opened, has a shelf life of a few days a vermouth can last approximately 2-4 weeks if kept in the refrigerator. Of course, that bottle of bourbon on your shelf can last years and years after being opened.
This isn’t a weakness of Vermouth, as some have claimed. Indeed, how many drinks in your home are good for a month after opening? Wine certainly isn’t. Fruit juice will go bad long before a month is up, and I know you aren’t chugging a bottle of cola or other soft drink a month after you’ve broken the seal.
It’s only against liquor where vermouth is perceived to have a “short shelf life,” but that’s no more a fair comparison than it would be for apple juice.
Oxidation is the reason for all of this. Oxygen is notoriously reactive with many things. Think about all the rust on your uncle’s 1977 pickup truck. Some wines are purposefully oxidized. For instance, some dessert wines are aged in barrels for 10-15 years, giving them a massive amount of exposure to oxygen.
Other wines are made with much tighter controls, limiting the amount of oxygen exposure until you pop the cork and pour it in your glass.
Vermouth falls somewhere in the middle. The presence of those extra herbs, and the somewhat higher alcohol content provides more backbone that enables vermouth to last longer than your average Chardonnay or Pinot Noir.
A good vermouth should last, refrigerated, for about 2-4 weeks. After that it begins tasting metallic, and its natural flavor is blunted considerably.
Why is Vermouth So Important to Cocktail History?
In the late 1800’s, sometime around 1880, a new variety of cocktails was being created all around the United States, driven by the importation of a new, toney drink from Italy—you guessed it, vermouth.
Up until this point, “cocktails” as they were known were mostly just variations on the whiskey cocktail, known today as The Old Fashioned. Oh sure, there were slings, and fizzes, and punches—interesting things that we’ll cover here at The Reluctant Bartender—but the word cocktail back then had a very specific definition. Today we use the term to reference any mixed drink containing alcohol.
The very reason that The Old Fashioned was given this name was to convey to bartenders that the drinker was ordering a cocktail made in the “old fashioned style” as a way to separate it from the newer creations of the time.
Remember the recipe for The Old Fashioned, and how it’s a simple mixture of spirit and bitters, with sugar acting as a sweetener? Well, imagine removing the sugar and instead substituting sweet red vermouth as the sweetening agent. Since vermouth doesn’t have the compact sweetness of a sugar cube we have to use a bit more volume to achieve the balance we are targeting, so we land on our familiar 2:1 spirit-to-vermouth ratio.
Bingo—there’s our Manhattan, arising from the whiskey cocktail and the addition of vermouth.
Take that same ratio, but swap out the whiskey for gin and use a dry vermouth. Boom—there’s the Martini.
This was the beginning of what could very well be called The First Cocktail Revolution. A large number of the drinks we consume today can trace their origins back to the this event—the introduction of vermouth to the American cocktail market.
Don’t just think of vermouth as a sweetener. Vermouth brings many additional flavors to the party. Many of these recipes—closely guarded secrets—include 20-30 different spices, botanicals, herbs, and more to add interesest to the base flavor and to differentiate from the competition. Vermouth also brings a little bitterness to the proceedings, bringing balance and interesting flavors to our cocktails.
Vermouth also helps to dilute the overall alcohol content of the drink, enabling us to drink more of them before falling off our barstools.
The importation of vermouth to America in the late 1800’s was a critical tipping point in cocktail history. It’s hard to image the landscape of mixed drinks without the introduction of vermouth and the resulting hierarchy of drinks we still enjoy today, many of which trace their origins back to the Manhattan and/or Martini.
It’s amazing how much impact this little Italian aperitivo has had on how we enjoy cocktails, 150 years later.
Styles
There are three main styles of vermouth: sweet, dry, and Blanc (or Bianco).
Sweet red vermouth—sometimes referred to as Rosso—is the sweetest of the vermouth styles, and made from a foundation of red wine. Some vermouth makers will mix in white wine as well and then use other processes to achieve the red color, but a good rule of thumb for us beginners here at The Reluctant Bartender is to remember: sweet vermouth is generally red, and made from a base of red wine.
Dry white vermouth is also known as French Vermouth, and is mostly made from white wine. White vermouths tend to be much drier tasting, with lower sugar levels than their red cousins. The botanicals used in white vermouth nudge its flavor more towards the citrus end of the spectrum, which explains why dry white vermouth pairs so well with gin in a martini—gin itself often has similar flavor characteristics.
Blanc or Bianco vermouths sit somewhere in the middle of sweet and dry. They aren’t quite as lean as a dry vermouth, but nowhere near as rich and full-bodied as most red vermouths.
These are good guard rails, generalities for the home bartender. Remember though that there are exceptions to every rule, so read the label and if it’s not clear what you’re holding, whip out the cell phone and do a quick Google search. Some reds are actually drier and more bitter (for example, Punt e Mes.)
Some Recommendations
We here at The Reluctant Bartender like to sip on vermouth over ice, and we encourage you to think of it as more than just a mixer. After all, that’s exactly why it was created in the first place, as a sippable, delicious pre-dinner beverage!
When it comes to food and drink, defer to the Italians, and follow their lead.
For sipping, we recommend red/Rosso vermouth, and get yourself a good one—they aren’t expensive. While you can shell out quite a few doubloons for rarefied, high-end examples, this is not a requirement for enjoyment.
Two of our favorite reds vermouths are Carpano Antica Formula (remember Carpano is the original vermouth maker) and a French vermouth named Dolin. We generally reserve the Carpano for special occasions, or when we know we can get through a bottle without wasting it in the refrigerator. At around $30 a bottle, it’s not going to break the bank, but we loathe having to pour the remainder away because we didn’t get to it in time.
If we were to sip one, it would be the Carpano. It’s rich, bursting with flavor, sweet, and slightly bitter. It has a full body and a depth of flavor that is worth exploring, and seems to be better suited for cooler weather. That said, with a splash of bubbly Prosecco (the Italian cousin to Champagne) it makes a wonderful light drink for sipping in the sun. Toss in a little lemon peel, pour over ice and enjoy.
Dolin red vermouth is a little leaner, more herbaceous and fresh compared to the deeper, darker flavor of the Carpano. Dolin is our recommended go-to for drinks calling for red vermouth in their recipes, and is considerably less expensive. Dolin is a French Vermouth, produced under a controlled and regulated methodology to ensure quality.
Both can be found in 750ml bottles, but we prefer to purchase in the smaller 375ml sizes if your retailer carries them.
One quick note: some package stores only carry low-end vermouths from bulk manufacturers. They’re…okay. One way to judge a really good liquor store is by the number of vermouths they carry. If you’re only finding dusty bottles of Martini and Rossi tucked away on a bottom shelf, you’re probably not purchasing from a place that cares about such things. We certainly hope you’re not buying good wine from this kind of store.
We aren’t throwing shade on the package store here—on the contrary, they serve an important purpose. That said, we suggest a slightly better store for exploring your new vermouth habit.
On the white vermouth side of the ledger, both Dolin and Carpano offer exceptional versions of dry and Blanc/Bianco vermouth for use in the recipes which call for them. We don’t find these to be the kinds of vermouth to sip, though some folks are fine sipping on a Blanc vermouth—again, it’s slightly sweet, but not as sweet as the red. Generally white vermouth is used as a mixer.
Have Fun With a Flight!
If you’re not familiar with vermouth, don’t worry. That’s why we’re here, to set you off on the right path. Here’s a suggestion: the next time you’re at a good bar, strike up a conversation with the bartender and see what different kinds of vermouths they offer. Ask if you can do a tasting flight. Most bartenders love this kind of thing, because they know the different flavors available, and they love sharing their knowledge. Most good bars will at least have both Dolin and Carpano on hand—that’s a great place to start your comparisons. And if they have a few more, try them too!
Last time we were in Rome, we did a tasting of four different Italian vermouths in the picture below. The bartender was happy to let us try them and talk about them. Sometimes bartenders enjoy this so much—instead of just whipping up another Sex on the Beach for the woo-girls—that they won’t even charge you for the tasting.
Have fun, give it a try. Explore.
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Thanks for reading, and we’ll talk to you next time!
Fun!
I personally like the flavor profile of Cocchi di Torino. But the tall, thin bottle doesn't store well in my fridge. La Quintinye is the sweet vermouth most often found in my home bar.