Collection: Vermouth

Vermouth is an aromatized and sometimes fortified wine, flavoured with various botanicals (roots, barks, flowers, herbs, spices). The word vermouth is derived from the French pronunciation of wermut, the German word for wormwood (also known as absinthe), likely the main ingredient when it was considered a medicinal drink. Wine had been already infused in China, India, and ancient Greece long before the Germans did it with wormwood in the 16^th century, but the form we know today was a version of the German beverage that an Italian merchant brought back to Turin in the mid to late 18th century. Vermouth was served as an apéritif in fashionable cafés in and around Turin, and by the late 19th century, it became popular with bartenders worldwide as a key ingredient for cocktails such as the Martini, Manhattan, and the Negroni.

Vermouth is produced by starting with a base of neutral grape wine or unfermented wine must. Each producer adds additional alcohol and a proprietary mixture of dry ingredients to the base wine. Once aromatized and fortified, the vermouth is sweetened with either cane sugar or caramelized sugar, depending on the style.

While Italy and France produce most of the vermouth consumed throughout the world, Spain, in particular the Catalonia region, offers a wide range of excellent vermouths, known locally as Vermut. Reus, in the south of the region, is known as the capital of Vermut, since it introduced the drink in Spain during the 19th Century.