Vermouth is an unsung hero of cocktails. It also divides opinion: If you ask a mixologist for their thoughts on vermouth—an aromatized wine infused with botanicals, herbs, roots, and/or spices—their faces might light up with excitement or cloud over with sadness.
Equally, I feel both. There are more American vermouth brands appearing on the market each year, and I’m constantly searching for ones I haven’t tried. The process of making vermouth is fascinating, and the flavor opportunities are endless.
Unfortunately, American drinking culture is still recovering from Prohibition—even 90-plus years later. Although classic and pre-Prohibition cocktails are more common in American bars than they were 20 years ago, most drinkers who order a martini still ask for it without vermouth. (When I’d broach the subject of vermouth with customers, I often got a “yuck” face in response.) In the United States, at least, consumers have learned to treat vermouth like an unwanted ingredient, kept in the back of the cabinet for only the most unwanted guests.
It deserves better.
How Did We Get Here?
There is plenty of blame to go around, but consumers mainly learn from the professionals who serve them and the brands that advertise to them.
“Bartenders are taught to treat [vermouth] like toxic waste,” says cocktail historian David Wondrich. However, one of the most famous cocktails—the martini—could not have been born without it. And ask any whiskey drinker for their favorite cocktail besides the old fashioned, and they’re likely to name the Manhattan—also made with vermouth.
There are many different styles of vermouth, and exploring them is as much fun as making your own. Plus, the history of vermouth is rich and intriguing.
Aromatized or mulled wine is literally ancient. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, macerated wormwood and flowers in a strong, sweet wine that he was prescribing for certain ailments in the 5th century B.C. Later, the ancient Romans also drank hippocras, blending different wines and adding spices thought to have healing properties. There is plenty of evidence of aromatized wine in medieval Europe, too—all predecessors to what we know today as vermouth.
Herbalist Antonio Benedetto Carpano may have created the first commercial sweet vermouth in 1786, out of his apothecary shop in Turin, Italy, by combining herbs, spices, and fortified wine. (The name came from the German for wormwood, wermut.) In 1813, another herbalist, Joseph Noilly, created the first commercial dry vermouth in Lyon, France, flavoring white wines with botanicals such as chamomile and bitter orange, along with the common wormwood.
It’s not clear when vermouth first became a cocktail ingredient, but it appears in Jesse Haney’s 1869 Steward and Barkeeper’s Manual, in which the “Vermuth Cocktail” is essentially vermouth over ice with a lemon-zest twist. The more enduring martini and Manhattan, meanwhile, first emerged around the same time. The Manhattan came first, while the martini evolved from the martinez cocktail—made of genever, rosso vermouth, dry vermouth, orange curacao liqueur, and aromatic bitters. The martini would get drier over the years, with early 20th century recipes simply calling for gin and dry vermouth.
After Prohibition, there was an American boom in vermouth—the dry martini was fashionable, and vermouth became the country’s best-selling wine. Italy’s Martini & Rossi was a dominant brand, while domestic producers such as California’s Gallo benefited from lower tax rates and anti-Italian sentiment after World War II.
In more recent times, the first “craft” vermouth may have been Vya, founded in 1999 by engineer and fortified-wine expert Andrew Quady. Since then, many more American brands have hit the market, and drinkers have become aware of more styles and vermouth traditions.
Homemade Vermouth
One way to get to know those different vermouths would be to travel across Europe to taste regional differences or to travel across the United States to taste what different American producers are offering.
Or, there is another way: Experiment with your own.
Wine: The Foundation
There are two schools of thought about which wine to use for making vermouth at home.
The first approach is that any drinkable (if not exceptional) wine will do the job. So, you can pick up a some wine on sale at your local liquor store and save big. And, because you’ll be adding plenty of aromatics to the wine, you’ll hardly be able to tell that it’s not a top-shelf bottle.
The other school of thought is that your base is your foundation, and without a strong foundation, you can’t have an excellent product. Even so, you might want to start with a less expensive wine to nail down your recipe—it might take some time to find your sweet spot. After all, there are several other decisions to make: Which botanicals and spices do you like? What proof level do you prefer? Do you want it bitter, dry, or sweet?
Once you’ve got those answers more or less dialed in, you can try different wines and even spend a little more—but you might also find that, with your recipe, a mid-priced wine works just fine.
Developing a Recipe
The internet can make it relatively easy to get started. It’s difficult for brands to hide what’s in their products today—the core stuff, anyway. So, you’ll want to collect some of the basic herbs, roots, and spices that are typically found in vermouth.
It starts with wormwood, the ingredient from which vermouth gets its name. (No, it won’t make you hallucinate, and it’s a critical ingredient for its antioxidant properties.)
Here are some other typical base ingredients:
- dried gentian root
- cardamom pods
- juniper berries, whole and dried
- dried cut ginger root
- dried angelica root
- dried chamomile flowers
- fresh orange peel
- fresh lemon peel
- fresh sage leaves
When collecting these aromatics, you’ll want them to be chopped or whole—not powdered. The number and quantity of aromatics to use will depend on the volume of vermouth you want to make and your own taste preferences. When infusing, use more liquid than you think you’ll need, and pull back on aromatics that have bolder profiles.
Now’s the time to think about your target profile. If you’re making a sweet vermouth with a fruit-forward red wine, you may want to add baking spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and mace. Vanilla bean can also be a wonderful addition to sweet vermouth. You’ll also need to decide whether your sweet vermouth needs sugar, which will depend on the base wines’ sweetness—using moscato often solves that problem for me.
When making a dry vermouth, I think about additional botanicals like they’re perfumes—delicate layers. I add organic rose petals to my dry vermouth, and I load up the orange and lemon peels. I also add rosemary, pink peppercorns, and coriander.
Once you’ve collected your base aromatics, you’ll need a fairly neutral spirit to fortify the wine. I like to use unaged brandy for sweet vermouth and, if I can find it, unaged rye for dry vermouth or a vodka that’s not made from corn—a wheat vodka works well. The ratio should be 8:1, wine to spirit; the ideal ABV for vermouth is 15 to 18 percent.
Here are a couple of tried-and-true recipes that can serve as starting points.
Sweet Vermouth
4 green cardamom pods
2 star anise
2 whole cloves
4 juniper berries
3 leaves fresh sage
½ tsp cut gentian root, dried
½ tsp angelica root
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp red peppercorns
½ tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp wormwood
1 tsp chamomile flowers
4 cinnamon sticks
1 vanilla bean, seeds removed
Peels of 2 large oranges
4 cup red zinfandel wine
3 cup moscato wine
1 cup ruby port wine
1 cup unaged grape brandy
Dry Vermouth
6 green cardamom pods
6 juniper berries
4 leaves lemon balm
½ tsp cut gentian root, dried
½ tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp angelica root
2 cinnamon sticks
1 Tbs wormwood
1 Tbs cut ginger root, dried
2 tsp chamomile flowers
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 Tbs organic Damask rose petals, dried
½ vanilla bean, hulled
Peel of 1 lemon
Peel of 1 grapefruit
4 cup sauvignon blanc
4 cup pinot grigio
1 cup unaged rye whiskey or wheat vodka
Place the aromatics—everything except the wines and spirits—in a large muslin drawstring bag. (Optionally, put the bolder aromatics in a separate bag: For the sweet vermouth recipe, I place the cardamom pods, star anise, cloves, and juniper berries in a separate bag, and I remove them from the mixture after eight or nine days, depending on my taste test.) Put the bag(s) in a stockpot with half of your wine. Bring it to a low, rolling boil for about 10 minutes with the lid on the pot. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes, making sure the warm wine covers the aromatics completely. Allow this mixture to cool and pour it into a large container with the rest of your wine and spirit. Seal the container tightly, and store it in a cool, dark, dry place, away from sunlight and heat sources. (Some experts say to keep the container in the refrigerator, and some say room temperature is fine. I have never infused my vermouth in the refrigerator.)
Testing and Tweaking
For your first several batches, check the vermouth each day by tasting the liquid to see how the aromatics are infusing; depending on how the flavor is developing, you may want to pull out one or more the aromatics earlier than others (hence the option for a separate bag). You might find that your vermouth tastes perfect after one week, or it may need two weeks to fully mature. My own vermouth is usually ready in 10 to 14 days—I don’t infuse it for longer than that.
Take notes on everything during this process. For large batches, weigh your aromatics. Keep track of the wine brands you use. Taste the wine with care, and make notes on their profiles before you infuse them.
Once your vermouth is the chef’s kiss, store in glass bottles with a vacuum sealer—often called wine savers—be sure to date the bottles once you open them and always refrigerate after opening. I like to use old wine bottles, cleaned and sanitized before re-use. You can also use swing-top glass bottles.
If you become obsessed with vermouth and think it might be your calling, there are many outlets where you can seek further education. There are online courses that offer more information about the history of vermouth and the different styles. Level 4 of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) includes a fortified wine course. And, of course, wine schools and academies also offer courses in fortified wine.
Even if it’s just for fun, however, there’s a lot to be said for embracing this unsung hero of the cocktail world—a customizable component that can make any martini or Manhattan truly your own.