Sip up the sweet life

Bittersweet cocktails, savory appetizers open the palate for dinner.

The whole thing apparently started with vermouth. Think Turin, Italy, around 1786. A smart young distiller of tinctures and elixirs, Antonio Benedetto Carpano, creates a fortified white wine boasting dozens of botanicals, then cleverly markets it as the perfect before-dinner drink for ladies, in place of manly red wine.

Dainty, delicious: Bingo. It’s vermouth, and before long everyone is making a version. Enter accessible ice, gin, and Western industrialization, and the aperitivo, or aperitif, if you’re French – is born. From the Latin, “to open, uncover” the bittersweet nature of this kind of drink is designed to open the palate and relax the soul.

“As we move through the 19th century, the growing industrialization of the

West creates leisure for the working class, which allows for more time to be spent socially,” said cookbook author Kay Plunkett-Hogge. Her most recent book, “Aperitivo: Drinks and Snacks for the Dolce Vita” (Octopus Publishing, $19.99) explores bits of aperitivi history with recipes and delves into the evolving nature of this ever-evolving facet of “la dolce vita,” the sweet life.

“Coupled with the concurrent explosion of the ice trade ... this synchronicity enables cocktails in America, the British development of pub culture and gin palaces, and the French and Italian development of aperitifs and aperitivo, all around the same sort of time. And all within an urban context,” explained Plunkett-Hogge.

But it’s in Italy where the aperitivo takes on a meaning all its own, beyond the cocktails, beyond the nibbles.