This summer, pause for the vermouth hour
THIS year while in Madrid, I fell prey to what the Spanish call la hora del vermut, the vermouth hour, a break in the day for a glass, generally before eating. In Spain, it customarily takes place before lunch. On my visit, though, I saw more people pausing for vermouth after the workday, as a transitional moment before embarking on whatever adventures the evening promised.
The Spanish ritual is simple, especially in warm weather in the numerous plazas outside bars, cafes and tapas joints in Madrid, where, if you are lucky enough to commandeer a table, you are all set up.
Once you have ordered, servers arrive with a bottle of Spanish vermouth, which they will pour sometimes into tall Collins glasses, other times squat tumblers, but always filled with ice and garnished with an orange slice. The vermouth usually comes with a nosh, like a small bowl of green olives and a plate of picos, stubby little breadsticks. Salud!
The vermouth hour is both a joyous custom to adopt and a bit of a revelation. I’ve always liked vermouth as an occasional aperitif, but to make a daily habit of it is to taste a stunning variety of possibilities.
What is vermouth? It’s wine that has been fortified with neutral spirits and infused with botanicals, often beginning with wormwood and including all manner of spices, herbs, bark, fruit zest or whatever the mad scientists behind the recipes decide to use. They are generally 15 per cent to 19 per cent alcohol. Most are moderately sweet, some very sweet and others dry.
Most people are familiar with the mass-market brands used primarily for cocktails like martinis and Manhattans. That’s not what the Spanish are drinking, and certainly not at places that take beverages seriously. Those bottles tend to come from boutique vermouth specialists or serious winemakers who’ve added vermouth to their lineup.
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I was so enamoured of the vermouth hour that I’ve tried to continue it at home. Shopping in New York, I found 10 excellent, distinctive vermouths – five Spanish, three Italian and two American – to recommend, all of which make excellent aperitifs. (One, I suggested, would make an equally good after-dinner drink.)
Some of these vermouths are made in small quantities, so keep your eyes open for when they appear. For the Spanish vermouths, it helps to have a specialty store like Despaña Vinos y Mas in New York, which always has some interesting bottles on hand. Good wine shops, too, ought to have at least a small selection.
Vermouth should always be refrigerated, from when you bring a bottle home. Once opened, kept in the fridge, it will last at least a month, sometimes more.
Here are the 10 bottles I recommend, from least to most expensive.
Valdespino Vermouth Jerez de la Frontera, 15 per cent, US$25
This superb Spanish vermouth, from an excellent sherry producer, is made with aged oloroso blended with muscatel and infused with roots, herbs and dried fruits. It’s lightly sweet. But you get a whiff of the smoky, savory, umami of the oloroso, and it returns as you savour the dry, refreshing aftertaste. Great value alert! (Polaner Selections, Mount Kisco, New York)
Bordiga Vermouth di Torino Extra Dry, 18 per cent, US$29
This dry white vermouth from northern Italy is made from moscato, trebbiano and cortese, and blended with an array of botanicals, many of them locally grown. The producer, Bordiga, which has been making vermouth for more than a century, recommends this for martinis, but I quite like it as a change-of-pace aperitif. (Oliver McCrum Wines, Benicia, California)
Casa Mariol Vermut Negre Terra Alta, 15 per cent, US$30, 1 litre
Casa Mariol makes wine and vermouth in Terra Alta, in southern Catalonia. This bottle is made with macabeu, a white grape generally used as a component in cava. To achieve the dark colour, it is macerated with green walnuts and local herbs. It offers the aroma of vanilla, thyme and orange zest. On the palate, it’s pleasantly bitter with a flavour combining orange and vanilla, a bit like a Creamsicle. (Vinos Libres, New York)
Carpano Antica Italy Vermouth Antica Formula, 16.5 per cent, US$34
This is a big-production vermouth from Carpano, a well-known producer that uses grapes from all over Italy. It is vinified and blended with a wide array of botanicals, predominantly, judging by the flavour, vanilla and caramel. It’s quite sweet, and while I’m happy to drink it as an aperitif, you could serve it after a meal, too, as a modest dessert supplement. (Branca USA, New York)
Alma de Trabanco Quinquina en Rama Asturias, 15 per cent, US$35
Quinquina is a vermouth-like beverage in which cinchona bark, from which quinine is derived, is among the leading botanicals in the blend. This is doubly unusual because it is made with both white wine and unfiltered cider, which makes sense. Trabanco produces cider in Asturias, in northern Spain, where it is a traditional local beverage. This is bottled unfiltered, giving it a slightly hazy appearance. Yet it’s very much in the vermouth family, intensely herbal, moderately sweet and resolutely fresh and refreshing. (De Maison Selections, Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Color Collector Vermouth Columbia River Gorge, 17 per cent, US$35, 500 millilitres
Bethany Kimmel of Color Collector makes tiny lots of exquisite gamay in the Columbia River Gorge region of Oregon. Smoke from wildfires caused problems with some of her 2020 vintage, imbuing one lot of wine with a lightly smoky taste. Her creative solution was to turn it into vermouth, flavoured with botanicals she either foraged or grew herself and lightly sweetened with honey from her own bees. You can still taste the gamay fruit in this vermouth, but whatever smoke flavour that existed blends seamlessly into the whole.
Navazos Palazzi Vermut Rojo Jerez de la Frontera, 17.5 per cent, US$36
This excellent vermouth is a collaboration between Equipo Navazos, a boutique sherry négociant that has been instrumental in the revival of sherry over the last 20 years, and Nicolas Palazzi of PM Spirits, which imports small batches of extraordinary spirits. The stamp of oloroso is clear on this lightly sweet blend. It is infused with spices and herbs to create a mellow, complex vermouth that refreshes as well as intrigues. (PM Spirits, Wilmington, Delaware)
BCN Ambre Vermut “Mut” Terra Alta, 18 per cent, US$39
BCN “Mut,” from Catalonia in north-eastern Spain, is made with garnacha blanca, or white grenache, macerated with a wide variety of herbs and spices. Some you can detect in this lovely, slightly sweet yet bitter and savoury vermouth: clove, cinnamon, fennel, some sort of citrus. This is a superb example of a classic, modern Spanish vermouth, if that’s not an oxymoron, just right as an aperitif over ice, with a thin orange slice. (De Maison Selections)
Barbichette/Forthave New York L’Amer Vermouth Lot 21, 15 per cent, US$42
Like quinquina, L’Amer is a modest variation on vermouth with a touch of bitterness that makes it taste almost like a combination of vermouth and amaro. This is a collaboration between Barbichette, a natural wine producer that vinifies New York grapes in Brooklyn, and Forthave, a Brooklyn distillery that makes Marseille, a superb amaro, among other things. It’s made with seyval blanc grapes macerated with myriad botanicals, resulting in an amber coloured vermouth that’s a little sweet, a little bitter and very refreshing.
Chinati Vergano Vermouth Bianco Piemonte, 16 per cent, US$45
This white vermouth from the Piedmont region of Italy is richer and sweeter than the Spanish selections in this list, yet nonetheless well-balanced and refreshing, complex and herbal, tasting very much like oregano. It’s made from a base of moscato and cortese. (Louis/Dressner Selections, New York)
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