Step into the wonderful world of booze, and sooner or later – whether you’re a rookie bartender or just a curious imbiber – you’ll hit a wall trying to classify certain drinks.
With most spirits it’s easy: if you’ve got ten bottles of rum, they’re all still rum. But when it comes to fortified and aromatised wines, things get tricky. Let’s be honest: at first, many of us put Cocchi Americano, Byrrh, and Suze into one mental pile. Vermouth was the only thing we felt sure about – probably because we’d met it before in the form of Bianco with orange juice (don’t deny it).
This piece is about the bottles we most often drink as aperitifs: neat, over ice, with tonic or soda, splashed into sparkling wine, or stirred into cocktails. We’re skipping port, madeira, and sherry for now – they deserve their own deep dive. But we will dip into digestifs, because amaro is enjoying a well – deserved comeback. One of us even spent months thinking Punt e Mes and Cynar were distant cousins (shameful times).
In part one, we’ll focus on the history and classification of vermouth. Part two will be about the drinks you really shouldn’t call vermouth – unless you want bar geeks to laugh you out of the room.
Let’s go.
The Basics
All the drinks we’re talking about today fall under the category of aperitif wines. The word “aperitif” comes from the Latin “aperire”, meaning “to open”. The idea is simple: these slightly bitter, slightly sweet drinks stimulate the appetite by helping your stomach get into gear.
Every aperitif wine is aromatised/flavoured with herbs, spices, and botanicals that define its taste and colour. These include vermouth, quinquina, americano, Barolo Chinato, and other lesser-known varieties. They’re also fortified wines, meaning their alcohol content has been boosted with spirits, often grape-based ones like brandy.
There are two main bases for these drinks:
- White wine mixed with grape spirit
- Mistelle – grape must fortified before fermentation
Mistelle creates a sweeter base, because the natural sugars remain unfermented and can highlight certain flavours differently.
Vermouth: Where and Why
Like many alcoholic drinks, vermouth’s ancestors go way back. People were drinking herb – and spice-infused wines long before our era. According to legend, one such proto-vermouth – Vinum absinthiatum, was created by Hippocrates himself, who noticed that adding wild wormwood flowers gave wine medicinal properties (and apparently helped with depression).
The word “vermouth” comes from the German wermut, meaning “bitter wormwood”. In 16th – century Germany, fortified wines flavoured with wormwood were widespread. The story goes that Girolamo Ruscelli – known as Alessio – introduced “Hippocrates’ wine” to the King of Bavaria. The King wasn’t a fan of its Latin name and simply called it Wermut Wein.
After travelling Europe with his “wormwood wine”, Alessio returned to Piedmont and kept making it, winning the favour of both everyday drinkers and Turin’s aristocracy.
By the late 18th century, vermouth had evolved from a medicinal tonic into a fashionable aperitif. In 1786, Benedetto Carpano began the first commercial vermouth production at his family winery in Turin. It became so popular that it reached France, where, 40 years later, Joseph Noilly created a dry white style. From that moment vermouth world was split into two main families: Italian red sweet and French white dry.
How It’s Made
Producers will never give away the exact recipe – many are passed down for generations – but the general process is straightforward enough to replicate at home.
- Harvest & prepare botanicals – These could include bittering agents like wormwood, gentian, or cinchona; aromatics like cardamom, mint, elderflower, or oregano; or woods and roots.
- Extract flavours – Botanicals are macerated to pull out their essential flavours and aromas.
- Blend with base – Usually a neutral white wine (wormwood doesn’t play well with reds), fortified with grape spirit, and sweetened.
- Filter & chill – The mix is cooled to around -8°C, then slowly brought back to room temperature.
- Rest or bottle – Depending on the style, it might be aged or bottled immediately.
Basically as regulation says – vermouth must include at least 4 ingredients:
- Wine
- Spirit
- Sugar
- Wormwood and any extra herbs
Categories
By sweetness & ABV:
- Extra Dry/Dry/Secco – White, 18–20% ABV, ≤40g sugar/L
- White/Bianco – Pale straw, ~16% ABV, 100–150g sugar/L
- Sweet/Rosso – Red, 15–17% ABV, ~150g sugar/L
By style:
- Vermouth di Torino – The Turin classic; DOC status since 1991 (e.g., Carpano Classico, Martini Rubino, Cocchi di Torino).
- Vermouth Chinato – Flavoured with quinine, sometimes gentian (e.g., Punt e Mes, Cocchi Dopo Teatro).
- Vermouth alla Vaniglia – With vanilla notes (e.g., Carpano Antica Formula).
- Vermouth Bianco – Sweeter Italian take on French blanc.
- Marseilles Dry – The original French dry vermouth (e.g., Noilly Prat).
- Chambéry Dry/Blanc – Lighter, more delicate; Dolin is the reference.
We’ve skipped Spanish and American vermouths – they’ll get their own feature.
That’s the tour for now. In part two, we’ll explore other wine-based aperitifs that aren’t technically vermouth.
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Stay boozy, stay nerds
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