New vermouths are crafted to mix, go solo, stir senses
Sour and gooey. Sweet and syrupy. Yech! Just a few of the comments heard when I mentioned vermouth. The old-school aperitif and mixer of brandyfortified wine steeped in myriad botanicals elicits strong— and often wrongheaded— opinions.
There’s a big difference between your grandfather’s dusty vermouth and the edgy new generation from artisan producers.
The new vermouth is the American riff on traditional European vermouth. In Europe, vermouth is often enjoyed as an aperitif on its own. Here, it’s been used more as an element in classic cocktails. And that’s where the latest chapter of vermouth begins. Mixologists whohave embraced smallbatch bourbon or gin are looking to expand their vermouth choices too. And artisan producers, more than 20 by last count, are meeting the challenge.
Formulas vary widely. It’s not as if there’s a single textbookway to make vermouth. Traditional recipes are closely guarded. Essentially, the new makers areworking blind, without the benefit of the more than a century’s worth of experience historic producers enjoy.
Winemaker PatrickTay- lor ofHammer& Tongs in Portland, Ore., discovered vermouth gives him the ability to share complex ideas in away he hasn’t been able to do with wine. “I’ll have an idea of what Iwant the vermouth to smell and taste like. It could be a childhood memory,” he explains. “Sometimes it’s more complex, something that resides in you and you have to get out.”
In a botanical shop he remembers sniffing turmeric, “and a 30-year-old memory of chasing a tennis ball downa ravine tumbles out ofmy head. That really pungent, dark, earthy, humid smellwas fascinating to a 10-year-old. That’s what I wanted to re-create.”
Two-and-a-half years later, he had the recipe for L’Afrique vermouth— a Syrah base with kola nut and turmeric as the main players in a cast of 23 botanicals. The inspiration for his Sac Resine comes froma visit to Old Mission SantaBarbara with his grandmother as a kid. The scent of burning incense had soaked into thewoodwork over 150 years. Resins and tree saps used in antiquity figure in his complex recipe.
All vermouths have some element of bitterness, and that is part of their charm, something American cocktail drinkers are just beginning to appreciate, whether the bitterness came fromthe wormwood that gives vermouth its name or from some other botanical.
Just for fun, bartender NeilKopplin has been experimenting with what he calls “ballistic vermouth,” using heat to quickly infuse the wine with botanicals. He didn’t make much killer— or even drinkable— stuff, but he did develop a passion for vermouth. One thing he and his partners at Oregon’s ImbueVermouth agreed on: using pinot gris as the canvas for their Bittersweet. Semillon is the base of Imbue’s Petal& Thorn, soft and floral, but with a bitterness akin to Campari orAperol.
“Our base demographic is chicks with tattoos,” Kopplin says with a laugh. (It’s Portland.) Definitely not your grandfather’s vermouth.