Vermouth
Vermouth is a fortified wine, available in various red and white varieties (made from the respective type of wine). You will also find sweet and dry vermouths, amber vermouth, and rosé vermouth on the market. Vermouth is fortified with a neutral spirit and then flavored with various botanicals, herbs, and spices, notably the wormwood plant which is also used in absinthe. Some brands add the ingredients to the spirt and redistill it before adding the wine, others add the ingredients to the wine first, and othersstill add them to the blended wine and spirit. Some sugar or other sweetener is typically the final addition. The drink originated in Turin in the second half of the 18th century and this part of northern Italy is still its stronghold. The second-biggest consumer of vermouth is France, but it is also made and enjoyed elsewhere including the U.S. and UK. In Italy and Spain, vermouth is commonly drunk as an aperitif, although the rest of the world knows it primarily as an ingredient in classic cocktails such as the Negroni, Martini, Vesper, and Manhattan.
Top Vermouth Posts:
How Long Does Vermouth Last?
Carpano Antica Formula Vermouth
Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth – New Recipe 2009
I swore off doing a monster roundup like this last time I did a big vermouth writeup — with 16 dry vermouths taste-tested and reviewed. Well, here am I again, facing a phalanx of sweet vermouth bottles that is even larger: 25 in total. Like dry vermouth, sweet vermouth was historically defined and categorized by…
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Fiero is Martini & Rossi‘s answer to Aperol, although unlike that iconic spirit, Fiero is actually a vermouth — an aromatized wine — not a distilled product. The new Fiero is actually a relaunch, the line having originated in 1998 as an “orange vermouth,” and only now revamped and reintroduced into a market that’s hungry…
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In keeping with some of our recent roundups — you now know what the best banana liqueur in the world is — I figured I’d take on another big staple in the cocktail world: dry vermouth. The catch? There are way more vermouths on the market than there are banana liqueurs, and before I knew…
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Vermouth Padro & Co. — sometimes styled inversely, as Padro & Co. Vermouth — is a Spanish operation that dates its winemaking production back to 1846. Today, Padro makes not one, not three, but five different vermouth products, each with its own distinctive character. Let’s dig into the entire lineup and see how they acquit themselves.…
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The Gonzalez Byass winery’s La Copa vermouth brand originally dates back to the late 1800s, but only recently has the brand been revived, with the original recipes and label design as a guide. These two vermouths — one dry, one sweet — are definitively designed for the high end. The Rojo bottling is made from…
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Martini & Rossi is a staple of the mass market vermouth world, and now the brand is moving upmarket with the launch of its Riserva Speciale line. The collection includes two vermouths — Ambrato Vermouth, a dry white vermouth, and Rubino Vermouth, a sweet red expression — and a red, bitter liqueur in the Campari…
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La Pivon is a new vermouth brand crafted in Madrid, using local herbs and botanicals (including cardamon, wormwood, cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, lemon peel, and gentian — La Pivon doesn’t say how the herbs are different in each bottling) and aged in oak barrels before bottling. As Spain is pretty much ground zero for the…
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Artisan vermouth is on the rise, and this new brand out of New York (Finger Lakes Distilling is the brand’s bottling partner) offers a glimpse of what’s being done. Little City doesn’t offer a lot of information about its production — though check out the huge number of botanicals in each bottling. Thoughts on both…
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La Valdotaine is an Italian alpine distillery with a rich portfolio of spirits, liqueurs, and fortified wines. While the operation dates back to 1947, the products produced here are only just now available in the U.S., thanks to importer A. Hardy. Just two of La Valdotaine’s products are being made available at this time, a…
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Dubonnet is a French aperitif — an aromatized wine similar to vermouth — that’s been around for 170 years. If you look at the back bar of most dives, you’ll see a dusty bottle of Dubonnet that’s been sitting around for nearly that long. Even though Queen Elizabeth II claims Dubonnet as her tipple of…
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