Vermouth and the aromatized wines

Vermouth is wine that went to the apothecary and came back more interesting. It is the quiet half of the Manhattan, the Martini and the Negroni, and the most mistreated bottle in most bars, left open at room temperature for months while its wine slowly gives up.

What vermouth is

The European Union defines the family. Aromatized wine must be at least 75 percent grapevine product, may have alcohol added, and sits between 14.5 and 22 percent. Vermouth is an aromatized wine with added alcohol whose characteristic taste comes from Artemisia, the wormwood genus; the German word for wormwood, Wermut, gave the drink its name. Sugar sets the sub-styles: extra dry under 30 grams per liter, dry under 50, semi-dry up to 90, semi-sweet up to 130, sweet above that. Producers are not obliged to print the class, so the words on the label are guides rather than guarantees. Vermouth di Torino has its own protected specification, confirmed in 2017, with three Piedmontese wormwood varieties recognized.

How it is made

A base wine, usually white and neutral, is fortified with grape spirit or neutral alcohol and flavored with botanicals. Wormwood leads, and around it sit the familiar apothecary names: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, bitter orange, juniper, elderflower, ginger, marjoram, rhubarb, star anise, chamomile, gentian. Producers macerate the botanicals in wine or in alcohol, sometimes both, and blend the infusions back into the base; Noilly Prat at Marseillan turns its botanicals by hand through the wine, a step the house calls dodinage. Sugar is added to style. Red vermouth is generally made from white wine and colored with caramel, which surprises people; it was once made from red wine, and some producers have returned to it. The Marseillan tradition also ages the base wine for its dry styles outdoors in casks, letting sun and salt air oxidize it gently before the botanicals go in.

Styles

Sweet, rosso or rouge is the Turin original: amber to mahogany, around 150 grams of sugar, bitter at the edges, built for the Manhattan and the Negroni. Dry is pale, herbal and sharp, the Martini's partner, with Marseillan and Chambery as its historical homes. Bianco or blanc is pale and sweet, with vanilla and white flowers, a style that appeared around 1900 and has become the bartender's bridge between the other two. Ambrato is dry and amber, often cask aged. Rose is pink and fruit led. Chinato adds cinchona bark and bitterness and belongs beside the amari.

A short history

Wormwood wine was a Mediterranean medicine in antiquity. By the late Middle Ages its production centered on Piedmont and the Savoy border country, which is why both Italy and France can claim it. Antonio Benedetto Carpano is credited with commercializing vermouth in Turin in 1786, in an apothecary's shop near the royal court; an 1833 advertisement is the first known use of the words Vermouth di Torino. Joseph Noilly made the dry style in Marseille from 1813, Chambery followed in 1821, and Cinzano and Martini and Rossi built the big Turin houses in the nineteenth century. Vermouth reached the United States in the 1850s and 1860s, the Vermouth Cocktail was in print by 1869, and the Manhattan emerged in the 1860s and 1870s and boomed in the 1880s, with the Martini and the Negroni after it. Prohibition and two wars hollowed the category; the Dry Martini boom rebuilt it; the cocktail revival of the last twenty years brought the small houses back.

Storage

Treat it as wine. Once open, the bottle goes in the refrigerator and is finished within about six weeks; Difford's gives that figure, and most working bars are stricter. An inert-gas or vacuum preserver slows the decline. Unopened, a bottle with a screw cap stands upright in a cool dark place; one with a driven cork lies on its side. A vermouth that smells flat, nutty or sherried has oxidized and will make a tired Manhattan. Buy small bottles if you pour slowly.

In cocktails

The Manhattan is two parts rye to one part sweet vermouth with bitters, and the vermouth's bitterness is the structure; a Turin rosso with real wormwood grip makes the drink, a soft sweet one makes dessert. The Martini is gin and dry vermouth, and the ratio is a matter of taste rather than law; a fresh, cold dry vermouth at one part to four or five is the modern norm, and the drink improves as the vermouth gets better. The Negroni splits gin, sweet vermouth and Campari equally, and the vermouth's job is to carry the sugar that makes the bitter drinkable. The Boulevardier does the same with bourbon. Bianco in a Bianco and tonic, or dry vermouth with soda and a lemon twist, is the aperitivo that costs almost nothing and converts people.

Buying by style

Keep three bottles: a Turin-style sweet vermouth for Manhattans and Negronis, a dry vermouth from Marseillan or Chambery for Martinis, and a bianco for long drinks and for anyone who finds dry vermouth austere. Buy from producers who name their wine and their wormwood; the protected Vermouth di Torino label is a useful shortcut. Price above the middle buys botanical complexity and base wine quality, both of which show in a stirred drink; below it, buy the smaller bottle rather than the cheaper one, because freshness matters more than pedigree.

Folklore and fact

The back-bar vermouth that has stood open since last spring is the category's enduring tragedy, and the belief that vermouth is a spirit is what keeps it there. It is wine. The second myth, French dry and Italian sweet, describes the nineteenth century and not the shelf: Turin has made dry vermouth since 1890 and Marseillan makes rouge. Read the label, not the flag.

Sources

• Regulation (EU) No 251/2014 on aromatised wine products (EUR-Lex).
• Difford's Guide, "Brief history of vermouth", "Styles of vermouth" and "Storing and serving vermouth".
• Consorzio del Vermouth di Torino, "The heritage of Vermouth di Torino".
• Noilly Prat, La Maison Noilly Prat.