Vermouth is a fortified wine flavored with herbs, today it is a popular beverage both clean and as an element of various cocktails including the immensely popular martini (drawing its name from one o the vermouth brands). It was invented in the Italian city of Turin by Antonio Benedetto Carpano in 1876. The whole region of Turin has areas suitable for planting grapes and also the Alps nearby offered a selection of great herbs. So Antonio used this potential and inspired by German winemakers created vermouth, a wormwood flavored wine. Initially he was looking for something that could replace red wine as the common drink of the ladies and came to the idea of sweetening his wine with spirit, because the herbs actually gave a slight bitter overtone. He took white wine as a basis and he came up with a mix of herbs that apart from wormwood included cardamom, cinnamon, marjoram and chamomile which sweetened by spirit created the unique taste of vermouth.
Like it was mentioned wormwood was used long before Antonio’s attempts. The first recorded attempts of spicing the wine with wormwood were done by the Greeks, who were probably the first most inventive experimentations in everything related to wine. The tradition became popular in Germany and the result was a German wormwood flavored wine, which nevertheless was not much of a sweet wine. Actually wormwood at the time was used in cheap wines to mask unpleasant taste or flavors, so it was more of a technical measure (similar to the fortification of port wine). But the addition of other herbs allowed turning this into an exceptional wine that soon got its praise.
Today there are three general styles of vermouth, in order from driest to sweetest: extra dry, bianco/white, and sweet/red. The extra dry tends to be bitter reminding of the original wormwood tones. It is often consumed as an aperitif, mixed with ice and water, which allows feeling the overtones of the drink. In addition to this it became very popular in the world of cocktails as an ingredient with exceptional taste. From the first days the drink became successful and the first shop opened by Carpano started operating 24/7 shortly after the opening. Today it is produced by the Cinzano, Martini & Rossi, Campari and Gancia companies, which are famed for their aggressive competition. Martini for example has one of the most serious advertising utilizing such things as television and even racing to promote their brand.
P.S.
“Shaken not stirred” is one of the phrases that brought vermouth its global popularity. Coined by Ian Fleming for his fictional spy James Bond, it became one of the trademark phrases of martini (a cocktail that has vermouth as one of the main ingredients). Of course there is no way to check the truth of this fact but becoming an element of Bond’s luxurious life was a serious boost to the sales of martini. It would be interesting to get back in time and see what would happen if Bond had another trademark drink, for example port wine.
