How I became a fool for vermouth
A Barcelona epiphany has made me a convert to Spain's favourite aperitif. Plus: what I've been drinking this week
MAYBE it was a flashback to unpleasant teenage experiences of Martini Rosso, more likely my aversion to bitter and quinine-inflected drinks like Campari, but I had been convinced for 40 years that I didn’t like vermouth. Sure, I mixed the dry white French version in Martinis and the sweet, red Italian one in Manhattans. But until I arrived in Barcelona earlier this month, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to order a glass on its own.
Spanish vermut is different, though - in both its taste and the culture surrounding it. That was what I realised as, tempted one afternoon into the gorgeousness of Dr Stravinsky’s bar in the Born neighbourhood, I sipped on a glass of their “Mediterranean herbs” vermouth (basil and fennel to the fore). It was a drinking epiphany.
Vermut is mostly red - though sweet white and rosé versions exist too - and usually less bitter than the Italian alternative. While it was invented in 18th-century Turin, and spread to France in the following century, vermouth came to Catalonia in the 1890s. At around that time, bartenders around the world began to use red vermouth in cocktails instead of sugar - yet in Spain it established itself as an aperitif and continued to be drunk that way - over ice, with a slice of orange peel or an olive.
Like all vermouth, Spain’s is made by gently fortifying wine (normally to 15 per cent alcohol, sometimes a little more) and steeping it in a range of botanicals. Sugar is also added: you could almost think of it as a dryer, aromatic, cold mulled wine. All serious Catalan vermuterias make their own, according to closely guarded recipes: the owner of the tiny, brilliant Cala de Vermut, in Barcelona’s central Barri Gòtic, proudly told me that his reserva uses 45 different botanicals. Some employ even more than that: common aromatics include wormwood, chamomile and citrus peels as well as a wide range of herbs and spices.
This vermut de la casa is sometimes served from the barrel (de grifo), as at Barceloneta’s magnificently unpretentious Bar Electricitat. Here, every bare white table also has its own soda siphon, a mark of any serious vermuteria: Spaniards often add soda to their vermut for a longer drink, especially in summer heat.
Vermouth’s popularity waned from the 1970s, becoming a bit of an old-man drink - but it has enjoyed a revival over the past decade or so. This was helped by its affordability in Spain during the crisis years, at around €2 a glass. Now it is firmly re-established as an institution, with its own vocabulary: if you invite friends to “fer el vermut” (Catalan: “do vermouth”) you gather for a vermuteo, especially on a Sunday before lunch. Either in serious vermut action like this or just with a quick drink, it is invariably accompanied - at least in Barcelona - by salty snacks such as olives, anchovies and other conservas (canned fish), nuts or crisps.
Thus at Quimet & Quimet, in the Poble Sec barrio, conservas are the snack of choice: indeed this is essentially an old-fashioned grocery store with a bar. It appears little changed since its founding in 1914, aside from today’s bemused Chinese tourists. I enjoyed a chunk of bonito tuna with my vermut here. Meanwhile some other bars, such as the celebrated Morro Fi in Eixample, sell a more ambitious range of prepared tapas.
Back home in London, I set out to investigate the vermuteo possibilities with the zeal of a convert. I quickly sought out the city’s two vermouth bars, King’s Cross’s Vermuteria, a mostly Italian joint; and the capital’s sole Spanish vermut specialist, El Vermut, which boasts an impressive selection of bottles that they import themselves.
Over a glass of Galician producer Petroni’s stunning sweet blanco (aromatics including bay, rosemary, thyme and Padrón peppers), I asked El Vermut bartender and co-owner Maria Priddin if her bar might be a tiny bit ahead of the curve, improbably nestled as it is in the Peckham-adjacent surroundings of Nunhead. “We have introduced Nunhead to vermouth,” she confirmed, but added that customers come from all over the capital, many inspired by trips to Spain. Drinkers like me, then.
But cocktail expert Richard Godwin, author of the indispensable The Spirits, thinks vermut’s time may have come: “The Spanish aperitifs culture is taking off a bit, and Spanish food culture is becoming more and more influential here. The big Italian vermouth brands are familiar, but the Spanish ones tend to be more artisanal, for anyone looking for something a bit different.”
So could we be knocking back vermut with canned anchovies in south London of a Sunday lunch before long? You read it here first.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Cave de Gan, Brut Océan 2020, Jurançon Sec - this Jurançon is from the biggest co-op in this appellation in the foothills of the French Pyrenees: it’s crisp and clean with a pleasing edge of salinity and minerality. A steal while on offer at Roberson (Roberson, £9.01 on sale this week; Bedales.)
Thymiopoulos Blanc des Côteaux 2021 - Apostolos Thymiopoulos is probably Greece’s most talked-about winemaker just now and this wine is a characteristically bold project. A blend of Malagousia, Assyrtiko, Vidiano and Aidani from vines grown in Naoussa at high altitude and a mix of fermentation methods (large oak barrels, clay amphora.) Fine, complex and long, hard to pin down. A serious Greek white (was the Wine Society on limited allocation, £27.)
La Petite Vanguard Grenache 2022, McLaren Vale - amazingly, this Grenache is just 12.9 per cent alcohol: fresh and juicy, with sweet fruit, pretty floral notes. Interesting and different (The Wine Society, £17.50.)
Ha! But go ahead anyway!
Dammit, I was going to write something on vermouth (though quite different.)