Latest / Into The Barchive / Vermouth Takes the Lead
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- Nashville Drinks: Into the Bacchae Where the past comes alive ⁓ Welcome in Barkavis. This week's episode, we're talking Vermouth. Yep. And you know, there's a moment in like every home bar where Vermouth turns into a bit of a question mark. As in Do I like vermouth or not or is it any good anymore? Bingo. Like, you know, you bought the vermouth for your martini or Manhattan. You opened it with the best of intentions. You made that one martini or one Manhattan and now it's living in the fridge door while you hope it's still good or even worse. You put it on the bar cart where it's gathering dust. Don't do that. And so you go to make that Manhattan or martini again, you splash some in, don't really think about it. And if the drink feels off, whose fault is it? It's mine. It's the vermouth. It's the vermouth. Right. You you blame the vermouth, you move on. And, know, the funny thing is, for most of cocktail history, vermouth wasn't a supporting player. It was actually the main thing in the glass. The star player, the main ingredient. Yeah, so today on Into the Bar Archive, we're giving vermouth the attention it deserves. Not just as a modifier, but as one of the most important ingredients ever to pass across a bar top. So we're going past this like medicinal version of vermouth, right? Yep. And so we're moving from vermouth as this medicinal aromatized wine to the backbone of pre-prohibition cocktail culture. And we'll look at how vermouth based drinks once define what it meant to drink well and drink thoughtfully. Okay. So we're going to do two cocktails as always. Yep. And both of these cocktails will put vermouth front and center. We're going to start with the Old Hickory, a late 19th century classic that borders the line between Spirit Ford and Vermouth Ford drinking. And then my Chrysanthemum cocktail. Yes. And your Chrysanthemum is a low proof, highly aromatic cocktail that reminds us just how expressive fortified wine can be when it's allowed to take the lead. And yes. Now. We're talking about these types of wines because the days are getting longer. Temperatures are getting warmer. Okay. And as those type of days returns, these are the kind of drinks that make sense. They're sessionable. So you can have more than one balanced balance and they're designed to be lingered over rather than just rushed. So pour yourself something light. preferably something fortified and aromatized, and join us as we open the Vermouth chapter of Into the Bar-Cive, where every drink comes with a past. Today I'm going to make the Old Hickory cocktail, named after former president Andrew Jackson, who was nicknamed Old Hickory. And so today we're going to start by adding an ounce and a half of sweet vermouth. We're going to use Carpano Antica formula here. It's a little more assertive vermouth, richer. It's got a lot more vanilla character. So I'm going to add an ounce and a half to my cocktail. From there, I'm going to add an ounce of my Dry Vermith. So I'm using Dolan Dry here, kind of a classic choice when it comes to Dry Vermith. So add that to my mixing glass. And then from there, I'm going to add some bitters. So we're going to do four dashes orange bitters. So again, using a Japanese Dasher, so that means eight. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now, because this old hickory cocktail is a traditional New Orleans drink, we're going to use four dashes of Peychaud's bitters. So again, Japanese stasher, double your dashes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. After that, I'm going to add my ice. So we'll get some of our nice ice here. And we'll want to create that iceberg in the stirring glass, which we've done. And then from there, we're going to stir our 30 to 45 seconds. So I said this was a New Orleans cocktail. And of course, the connection between Andrew Jackson and New Orleans is that Andrew Jackson was the key American general at the Battle of New Orleans that ended War of 1812. So there's always been an affinity between the city of New Orleans and this heroic general from the state of Tennessee. And so again, this cocktail didn't really pop up in bar manuals until the late 19th century. There are legends that St. Andrew Jackson sipped this mixture of sweet and dry vermouths. ⁓ with other people, but there's no like concrete evidence for that so But it's a good story along the way So when we come to the end of our stirring time We're gonna take a rocks glass and we're gonna add some ice to it So add a few cubes to kind of fill it up. We'll get one more there. And then from there, we will strain our old hickory into our rocks glass over fresh ice. So and then we're going to garnish with an orange peel and we're going to express that orange over the surface of the cocktail. Because this is a rocks glass and I've got some ice to kind of anchor My orange peel I'm gonna just stick it in right there and enjoy my old hickory Cheers For our second cocktail, I have the pleasure of making the chrysanthemum. In our jigger, we're going to take and put two ounces of driver muth. Grabbing our Corvin pivot. Measuring out two ounces. So I'm closing our lid. That's a cool little invention, that pivot there. We will now put one ounce of Benedictine. Benedictine being gay. Would you say honey? Liqueur? Herb? Spices? Yeah, I mean definitely a very sweet herbal liqueur. into our stirring glass. And lastly we'll put three dashes of absinthe of this St. George that we've used a few times. Tipping our bottle over. One dash. Two dashes. and three. a lower ABV cocktail. Put ice into our glass. Well let's start Stirrer. We'll stir 30 to 40 seconds. For me, hopefully it'll be about 20-ish. We'll stir until the liquid gets cold from top to bottom for this chrysanthemum. ⁓ When Blake told me we were making this cocktail today, I asked him not to have me do this because that's a hard name for me to pronounce, but here we are. He loves to make me suffer. Hey, you're doing a great job. You haven't fucked it up yet. As we are finishing our rotations, I have now chilled the cocktail fairly well, just a little bit more. and I will call that done. Let's grab our chilled coupe from the freezer. and we're going to strain into our chilled coupe. Beautiful color. And we're going to garnish with an orange peel. For those that have watched episodes in the past, you know that I'm not big on dropping in citrus to most of my cocktails, especially when it comes to a smaller vessel like a coupe. When I have such a large citrus pill. You can trim these up if you would like to make prettier garnishes. But the basic thing that we're trying to do right now and the most important part is to get those oils and essence from the citrus as I get that orange oil and aromas. just across the top of my glass. Not going to drop it in this time. Not going to make a special garnish. I am just going to discard. And my friends, we have the chrysanthemum. Cheers. Now that we built the cocktails, let's build the context. What is Vermouth? Well, Vermouth is a fortified wine aromatized with botanicals made up of a wine base. we're not talking about using like fine Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. Typically, it's a more neutral, high acid wine base. Then you take your wine base, fortify it with a spirit, typically a grape Brandy or some neutral spirit then add botanicals like roots and barks and herbs and spices and then you sweeten it depending on what style you're trying to make. Yes, sir as we go through different types of vermouths, definitely Needs to hold true to a specific botanical And the key botanical here is Wormwood. Wormwood. And I'm no botanist, but the name of the Wormwood is Artemisia absinthium. So when I hear Wormwood, the first thing that actually I think about is absinthe in the name. Absinthium. Yeah. So Wormwood is like the key bittering agent, not just in vermouth, but absinthe as well. Which makes my cock. still kind of balanced, but that's a little bit later. Then when we start talking about fortify, why fortify an aromatized wine then? Well, you have to remember as like vermouth has been around for centuries. And so by fortifying the wine, we're engaging in preservation before refrigeration. Okay. So again, it goes back to historically, It makes sense because they didn't have a way to chill this stuff down and preserve it. Or at least not conveniently. And so it was done out of necessity to take these wines and to add a higher strength boost to make it last. Yeah. Okay. And aside from preservation purposes, there are like medicinal and digestive traditions because of course like the bitterness will help get a person's digestive system moving. Yes. ⁓ I enjoyed those aspects of vermouth. Unlike other individuals, I prefer drinking vermouth straight, but we could also talk about that a little bit. Let's actually just talk about the history of vermouth before we go down those roads. ⁓ so vermouth, or at least the idea of aromatized wines, okay, as a broad category, have a long history dating back to antiquity, like Hippocrates, like the Hippocratic of... Do no harm, right? Do no harm. And so from there, the medieval era herbal or aromatized wines were used medicinally. OK. OK. So it's like tonics to treat whatever ails you. But modern vermouth was born in the 18th century in the Italian city of Turin, where Antonio Benedetto Carpano introduces the style we now know. as sweet vermouth. ⁓ We mentioned this earlier in what was our Manhattan in our Martini episodes that sweet vermouth predates dry vermouth. Yes. So while modern vermouth is initially comes in the sweet form, the French later developed dry vermouth and Marseille. Particularly with the brand we know as Noi Pratt. Noi Pratt. And then Shambari with the brand we know as Dolan. Dolan. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So we've got these newer styles of Bermuth that have come about with a dryer, but let's roll back to an earlier style. That sweetness. Vermouth as an export first comes to the United States. It's the Italian style, the sweet vermouth, followed by the drier French style. And as American bartenders embrace vermouth, this creates the development of our Manhattan's and martinis. Yeah. Episode three, right? Go back to that one. We'll tag it. So in early cocktail books, though, Vermouth was often treated as a base spirit, not just as a modifier. So like with our martini in Manhattan, a lot of times, you know, still the gin or the whiskey or the base spirit. But in drinks like the Old Hickory and the Chrysanthemum, it's Vermouth that's driving the drink. And both of these cocktails are pre-perobitionary drinks, historical cocktails. What brings them back to our palates then? If these are pre-Prohibition style cocktails, lower ABV style cocktails, what makes this come alive now? Well, part of it is there was kind of a downturn in Vermouth as a category, or at least in the American sense, after Prohibition, because the American palette begins to shift dryer. after prohibition, so away from some of the sweetness, whereas like during prohibition, the sweetness helped cover up like rotgut, bathtub gin, things like that. Vermouth is kind of relegated to the background and sometimes banished altogether, like with the martini and the manhattan. And part of that is a storage issue, right? Is that that little bottle of vermouth sat on the back bar gathering dust non-refrigerated and so that leads to a major decline following prohibition and then then we have the cocktail renaissance and as they're trying to rebuild and resuscitate pre-prohibition drinks like the one word drinkings there's an understanding it is non-negotiable vermouth must be refrigerated. Yeah, if you are buying a brand new bottle of vermouth, I will use my soap box now. If you buy a brand new bottle of vermouth, it has been sealed and preserved. But the moment, just like a bottle of wine, but the moment that you open it, the ticking clock starts. Luckily, because it is fortified, it takes it longer to technically kill. before this becomes vinegar or starts to lose some of its potencies and or aromatics or whatever you might call it, it does have a little bit longer than a bottle of wine itself, but it's still wine. Like, don't open the dang thing and then set it on the shelf and forget about it for three months. That's not the way to treat this ingredient. Yeah, I mean, it's just like if you were opening a bottle of ketchup or a of pickles, right? You can put them... in your pantry, but once you open them, you want to put them in the fridge. Keep refrigerated. It's funny that these bottles actually don't come with that extra little hint, like most of our cooking ingredients in the States, but definitely vermouth should be refrigerated after opening, right? A thousand percent. ⁓ As we start to talk about vermouth, we've already alluded that they are sweet and dry. We, in one of our cocktails, talked about a Bianco or a Blanco Vermouth, right? So let's talk about the different types and what's the difference in those types. Start with the first, start with sweet. So again, the oldest of the modern Vermouth styles is sweet or Italian or Rosso. And so although when you look at Pour a sweet vermouth you notice it's darker It's red or copper or something like that the dark color doesn't come from wine grape. They're still using white wine grapes instead the color comes from caramelized sugars that are being added to the vermouth and Typically the flavor profile on a sweet vermouth. It's going to be baking spices. It's going to be cocoa bitter roots and and vanilla, especially if you're using an antica style vermouth like I did in our old hickory. And great cocktails for this to go into are definitely bigger, bolder cocktails that can stand up against it that also have those flavor components like a bourbon or an aged ingredient. The only one that kind of stands out from this would be like Negroni. Yeah, well there, I mean, someone argued that the Negroni is more of a Campari cocktail than a gin cocktail. True. And so balancing that out with the sweet vermouth. ⁓ And so, yeah, using sweet vermouth more with age spirits. Again, there are counter examples to this, but as a rule that works, let's say... A majority of the time. Yeah. not even like 90 % of the time, but just more often than not. We're gonna say it's the ⁓ bourbon approach, 51 % or more. I like that. So I told Blake when he wanted to have this as an episode that I, this is the one that I get to geek out a little bit more because Vermouth, the way that it's made, if he kind of glazed over this, I've actually sat the way Vermouth cocked like, class, like how to make your own and make your own and go home with your own vermouth. Sitting in Spain one day, my wife was able to take me to a class and it is the fortified wine itself is clear. But if you want to make a sweet vermouth, you're adding caramel. You're adding a caramel syrup and that's what's giving it its red or brown dark tint to the cocktail. And the more that you add, the sweeter and the darker it gets and the lighter, the less sweet or lighter color it will be. Those baking spices, they had hundreds spread across the table. And so just like you would have in your own ⁓ cabinet, all these baking spices, all these different cooking spices, you get to choose and use your palette to, yeah, I might want sweet, but I can have sweet and spicy. I can have sweet and savory. I can have... sweet and just sweet. And going through that class was, I would say, eye-opening on the fact of just because it's a dry vermouth going into our next one doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be sweet, which leads to our third type of vermouth. So going down those, being in that class, it gave me the opportunity of truly hands-on going just because it's red, doesn't always mean it's sweet or not super sweet. And just because it's white doesn't mean that it's always dry. So now let's talk about our dry vermouths. That French. Yeah. So when we talk about dry vermouths, we're typically talking about the French style. And today, like with vermouth makers, like your Carpano or your Dolan, they typically will Carpana is an Italian vermouth maker, Dolan's a French vermouth maker, and they make all three styles. Very much so. But they lean into their... But traditionally, dry vermouth is French vermouth. It tends to be pale in color, tends to be crisp, herbal, floral, or even saline in its flavor profile. Yeah, going back to that savory salty... The dry vermouth that we were able to make in the class was just that. was, I tell people treat your bitters as spices like, you know, salt and pepper. Your vermouth should be approached the same way. It's your salt and pepper of a cocktail if you're using it correctly. Absolutely. And dry vermouth is something like, again, we talked about this in episode three on the martini in Manhattan. Vermouth is essential for a martini. whether you're dulling it out in dashes or ounces, right? With like a reverse martini or something. But it creates that extra character and kind of rounds out the gin and the martini. And dry vermouth is really essential for a lot of aperitif drinks. You know, that less sugary, you know, it's before the meal. And so like having that lighter vermouth helps open up the palate. before a meal. And the one that I think gets the least amount of play, but I use in more of my cocktails at the house is the third, the Blanc, the Bianco. Yeah. And so Blanc or Bianco Vermouth is essentially colored like dry, but is sweeter like sweet vermouth. So it's light colored, but sweet. It's the bridge. between sweet and dry if you were to lay them out on a continuum. It's softer, it's floral, and it's ever so lightly vanilla driven, almost like a sweet vermouth. ⁓ But oftentimes it's been historically overshadowed along the way. I'm going to pause us here for a moment to say today specifically, we are talking about vermouth as an ingredient. in a cocktail. Vermouth itself is standalone, just like any other spirit. It can be approached and used as an individual ingredient by itself, sipping vermouth, drinking vermouth, the vermouth, the hour of vermouth, right? Like, and you said that's like the Spanish version of like, Apertivo hour in Italy. That's their happy hour. a couple of less than 10 euro. You can get two for one vermouth with a plate of olives or whatever kind of and that's their happy hour. Their vermouth and it's literally called vermouth. Yeah, it should be treated and can be treated if that's your style of drink. That's just pouring yourself a dram of whiskey. You can just as easily pour a cold glass of house vermouth. Yeah, well, and I mean, just like whiskey or any other spirit, you could drink vermouth neat, drink it just on some rocks, right? Yeah. But I mean, I know at least I've done several times like vermouth and tonic. Like ⁓ we went to this winery in Virginia called Flying Fox. And so they made some great sea salt vermouth. So they had like fall, spring, summer, winter, and use different fruits and botanicals depending on the season. And they had the spring and summer editions for sale. We were there in like March of 2022, something like that. Brought home those vermouths and it was just great. Pour a couple ounces of vermouth, top it up with a lightly sweetened tonic and it's wonderful. Fortified wines are definitely, I would say, underrated and under not as well understood in our region as they could be much like other fortified spirits like a port these vermouths and ports right like but that's on a different episode yeah well and again if we think about the block or Bianco style vermouth, although it's been overshadowed much like aromatized and fortified ones more broadly. When we compare it to sweet and dry vermouth, where you have the Manhattan and the Martini as like those key cocktails, they're modern classics like the white Negroni. Yes. That have led the way and restoring the popularity of block vermouth. as well as rediscovered classics like the Cuban El Presidente. Yeah, both of those come to mind when I think of the Bianco or Blanc Vermouth, the El Presidente we've used in a class or two. And so it definitely is the ingredient that pops and should be there in that modern classic. Well, and when you look at the El Presidente, like historically, ⁓ old recipes would just say like French Vermouth and a lot of people assumed. dry and everyone was like well, this is okay, but then when they realized that the block style which Started in chambourie with Dolan in France that French vermouth met block vermouth not driver me they're like, ⁓ I see why people like this el Presidente so What is as we move away from vermouth? as the three of, you know, rose, the red or sweet, the dry, and then the Bianca or blanc, just, for Moot has a cocktail. Walk into it. So, you know, when we talk about Martini, Manhattan, El Presidente, Negroni, something like that, we're... Typically talking about in vermouth more as seasoning or modifier not the base ingredient. Mm-hmm a Vermouth cocktail is where the vermouth is the primary star It is the base ingredient like in both of our cocktails today ⁓ Both of these with it being the base Means that we also didn't use a lot of higher ABV spirits if not any Higher ABV spirit. Yeah, so like in your chrysanthemum, I think ⁓ Just real quickly your Benedictine was the highest ABV ingredient of either cocktail at 80 proof I mean technically the absence but since he were just dashing it Yeah, yeah, but in terms of substantial amount of alcohol your Benedictine was the highest proof of in ink highest proof ingredient of either cocktail. So these cocktails are lower ABV, okay, so it makes them more sessionable. It's easier to be like, I'll have a second. Yes, or a third. Right? They're highly aromatic. They are designed for a pair of teeth drinking. Those bitters and herbs help open up the palate before a meal. Yes. They provide us because they're sessionable, gives us time like on a nice spring day, because we can have more than one that we can hang out longer. I mean, these are these drinks are essentially analogous to session beers. They're lower ABVs. So you can have like a session IPA, sub 5 % instead of like something that's six and a half to seven and a half percent. where you're probably not gonna have quite as many of those? they, with them being lower ABV, they're also then present themselves for multiple times of the day. Again, pre-dinner, but hell, late afternoon, early afternoon, pre-post dinner, like it doesn't matter. They present themselves for a drink that can be throughout the day. Now, as I alluded to, they definitely, and you have, they're definitely pre-dinner has caught that category. Yeah, but like, where a martini, you drink one before dinner and you're like, okay, but if you drink two before dinner. You're having a different dinner experience. Yeah, and then you're having a night-night time, right? Yeah. These are drinks that you can drink. ⁓ I'll have one at one o'clock in the afternoon. Okay. And still be... totally okay for the rest of the day versus like, ⁓ right. I, I, I've mentioned it before, but I do want our, like our listeners and other individuals take vermouth and like truly try it on its own. If not to, to respect it and to drink it as a soul drink, drink it as an ingredient that you're trying to get the flavor profile so you know what you're using in your other cocktails. Yeah. 100 % like if you like martinis or manhattans Try the vermouth on its own. We always encourage viewers and listeners Try the ingredients on their own see what they're bringing to the table And so with the vermouth whether you're enjoying it neat on the rocks or with soda or tonic it gives you an opportunity to explore What does this vermouth bring to my martini or my Manhattan? But mine are groony. Yeah, and just because you didn't like the one, maybe you were not a No-Leaf fan, but you might like the Dolan brand. Maybe Antica is too big for you and you want something different. Like all Vermouths are not the same. Just because you've had one Bianco or Blanc Vermouth doesn't mean that it's going to be the same as the other. So definitely give them all a different try. Some of you like Coke. Some of you like Pepsi. Same concept. Yeah, I think that's a wonderful analogy to kind of make that comparison. Okay, so as our days get longer and and we the weather starts to, you know, lighten up and get some some warmth to it. Is the vermouth forward cocktail the way to go? It definitely seems timely in the sense that it gives us an opportunity to enjoy session drinking, particularly in the spring, because a lot of it's driven by like aromatics. Like as flowers are blooming around us, this gives us an opportunity to kind of lean into that. And spring drinking has always seemed to favor sessionable drinking. Things where we can easily linger over them rather than rush it. Aromatic rather than overpowering. Drinks like the Old Hickory and the Chrysanthemum. Yeah, they remind us that flavors don't require Force. Yeah. And that some of the most thoughtful cocktails were designed for exactly like this moment in the year. So vermouth has always lived in like the margins of a back bar. We've talked about it being bastardized and it's not treated correctly in most households. Hopefully that changes today. Absolutely. But it's, it's quite, it's a quiet, like essential ingredient. Yeah, and I think we've overlooked it because it hasn't been properly stored, because in the United States we don't have the same sort of aperitif aperitivo culture that they do in Europe. And so it's seldom been given top billing here in the United States. But as we've seen today, Vermouth is not some sort of supporting actor in cocktail history. it is part of the foundation of cocktail history. I can see that. Yeah, I mean, whether we look from its medicinal roots to its dominance in pre-prohibition mixology, vermouth has shaped how bartenders learn to balance bitterness, sweetness, aroma, and alcohol long before craft ever became a marketing term. To understand classic cocktails with out understanding vermouth is to read history with the footnotes removed and that's terrifying to a historian As we draw this episode to a close, ⁓ we can't encourage you enough to try it. Buy your bottle, treat it properly, and give Vermouth a second chance. As you do so, we also would love for you to like and subscribe to our channel and to give us some of those feedbacks that you have on those bottles that you may like or may not like. If you've got anything or any questions that you'd like to send our way, place them in the comments or send us an email at podcasts at into the bar archive.com or follow us on Instagram or tick tock, tick tock. Geez. I forget this one. We've got, we've got a following now on tick tock. Whoa. what else do we've got? Well, next time on into the bar archive, we'll continue the work of restoration by turning our attention. to people whose contributions have too often been written out of the record. In honor of Women's History Month, we'll be featuring cocktails associated with Ada Coleman, the legendary head bartender of the Savoy Hotel, and Audrey Saunders, whose influence helped create and define the modern cocktail Renaissance. And these two women were separated by nearly a century. Yet they are united in their impact on how we drink, how we think about cocktails, and how we tell our stories behind the bar. Until next time, keep your vermouth fresh, your drink sessionable, and your curiosity historical. This has been Into the Bar Archive, where every drink comes with a pass.