A New Generation of Vermouth Puts Wine in the Spotlight

Dave O’Brien’s wine-focused vermouth has its origin story in a great vacation. “On my first trip to San Sebastian, in Basque country, in 2010, I absolutely fell in love with the city, the culture, the food, the drink,” says O’Brien, a New York City–based wine and spirits importer, industry veteran, and developer of products, including Tximista vermouth. “Everything about that place spoke to me. With all due respect to Disneyland, it’s the happiest place on Earth, as far as I’m concerned.”

Among the many aspects of Basque culture that O’Brien enjoyed was Txakoli, the dry, white wine made from the Hondarrabi Zuri grape. (A rosé version from a related grape is more prominent on the export market than it is in the wine’s home region.) 

“Everyone’s drinking Txakoli, and they’re drinking it with everything,” O’Brien says. “That high-acid, high-mineral, high-salt-content wine is like a Swiss Army knife when it comes to food. It goes with everything, and it works like a seasoning.”

One thing was missing, though. While Txakoli was in abundance, most of the vermouth being poured during the aperitif hour was from other parts of Spain and made using other wines. If O’Brien wanted the famously food-friendly flavors of Spanish vermouth and Txakoli in the same glass, he was going to have to make it happen himself.

Second Billing

For centuries, vermouth has played an essential role in European aperitif and culinary culture. More familiar to modern drinkers as a cocktail component, vermouth has been compartmentalized by most American drinkers into two or three easily recognizable styles, best suited to one type of cocktail or another. 

Most curious drinkers long ago figured out that vermouth is indeed an aromatized wine, and not a distilled spirit. But their understanding of the wine focuses largely on its botanical blend, its color, and its level of sweetness. The wine itself is largely viewed as a flavor delivery vehicle and low-ABV filler, with little character or contribution of its own.

That’s largely by design, historically speaking. With vermouth’s longtime emphasis on the flavoring botanicals, many traditional producers sought lighter, more neutral styles of wine, or tapped supplies of cheaper bulk wine or leftover wine for the base of their products. 

But today’s renewed curiosity about cocktails and their components, along with a fresh appreciation for well-made wines, has given winemakers, bartenders, and other drinks professionals new room to maneuver in making wine-focused vermouths. 

Fresh Approach

In Uruguay, a love of the country’s wine regions coupled with a robust aperitif culture resulted in the birth of the wine-driven Vermut Flores. “We started with vermouth basically because it’s something we really like,” says Alvaro Aniano. 

A longtime bartender in Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo, Aniano worked with winemaker Juan Andrés Marichal and business partner Salvador Banchero to develop Vermut Flores in 2019. “The culture around vermouth is lovely. And we really like to drink it. From the beginning, we were making the focus on wine, because as a bartender, I always heard that vermouth is mostly wine, but everybody just talked about the botanicals. Nobody talked about the wine.”

The goal with Vermut Flores was to take the wine’s full range of characteristics, then build the vermouth’s flavors from that starting point.

The goal with Vermut Flores was to take the wine’s full range of characteristics, then build the vermouth’s flavors from that starting point. “We believe that the profile of Tannat can be interesting for vermouth,” says Marichal. “But because in vermouth, the aromas of the wine have to compete with the aromas of the botanicals, you need a good integration.” 

Tannat is the signature red grape from Uruguay. The nation’s rising reputation in wine circles is largely related to Tannat, which can produce wines that are dry yet floral and expressive, with a supremely drinkable quality. For Vermut Flores, the producers work with a fourth-generation family-run winery in Canelones. 

“We want to keep some profile of the wine in the vermouth,” Marichal says. “So we make our red vermouth with Tannat red wine, and our rosé vermouth with a rosé of Tannat made with a very short maceration, because Tannat tends to be very intense in color.” More recently, Vermut Flores introduced a blanc vermouth, made using a base of Albariño.

Breaking With Tradition

Putting the wine’s character at the center of its vermouth required breaking away from most European vermouth-making traditions. “We said, okay, let’s do it differently,” Aniano says. “Instead of talking about botanicals and using any wine to drive those botanicals, let’s find our best wines that are recognized around the world. Nowadays, Uruguay wine is really, really good, so let’s find the best wine and then find a botanical formula that can marry that wine. It’s completely the opposite way of thinking.” 

Some traditional vermouth botanicals, such as cloves, turned out to be too strong and overwhelmed the wine. So the producers instead looked to flowers, fresh citrus peel, and other delicate botanicals to keep the wine’s character forward. “We tried not to get too far away from what a vermouth consumer would expect. But at the same time we wanted to keep the wine alive,” he says. “When the wine is alive, as soon as you pour it in the glass, different things start happening with your senses.”

While undertaking their research, the Vermut Flores team came to understand they weren’t alone—that producers in California, South Africa, Australia, and elsewhere were following similar routes, and creating an ever-expanding world of vermouth that spoke more fully to these senses of place. 

They found some inspiration and support just a short boat ride away, in Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires. There, a team composed of Julián Díaz, Agustín Camps, Sebastián Zuccardi, and Martín Auzmendi were working with wines and botanicals from Mendoza to make La Fuerza, their “vermouth of the Andes.” 

Malbec forms the base for La Fuerza’s Vermú Rojo, and Torrontés for its Blanco and pink Primavera en los Andes. Together, the La Fuerza and Vermut Flores teams shared encouragement and advice as each sought to create a totally new type of product. “We realized we were all talking the same language about vermouth, and we were creating a new generation of vermouth,” Aniano says.

Close to Home

The Americas may feature strongly in this wine-focused vermouth drive, but producers closer to vermouth’s European birthplace are making their own contributions. 

In Spain, sherry bodegas such as Lustau have long tapped the flavor power of oloroso as a base for their vermouths. In Germany, Riesling from the Grand Cru Saarburger Rausch vineyard forms the core of Ferdinand’s Saar dry vermouth, resulting in a wine that’s supremely floral with a robust minerality. And in Italy, the venerable grappa producer Poli makes their Gran Bassano Rosso vermouth using the bright, fruity character of Merlot.

When conceiving Baldoria, a contemporary vermouth line made in Italy’s historic vermouth-producing region in the foothills of the Alps, Daniel Schmidt, master distiller Piero Novuloni-Bonnet, and their colleagues at the spirits company Ernest included wine in a pivotal role from the start. “We said, ‘Vermouth is wine and botanicals. They both need to be the best they can be,’” says Schmidt, Ernest’s CEO. 

Baldoria’s range includes a classic lineup of dry, bianco, and rosso versions that still strike their own identities, as well as vermouths including Baldoria Orange, with its base consisting of a skin-contact orange wine from Georgia. “If we want to call a vermouth ‘rosé’ then it needs to be a rosé wine. And if it’s a dry or bianco then it needs to be a Chardonnay,” Schmidt says. “Otherwise we’re just creating something that’s fooling itself.”

Red Tape

So why don’t more producers indicate the types of wines used in their vermouths? For one thing, U.S. regulations forbid the practice. “Yeah, it’s strictly prohibited,” O’Brien says. “You’re not allowed to have your varietal on the label at all in any way, shape, or form.” 

So why don’t more producers indicate the types of wines used in their vermouths? For one thing, U.S. regulations forbid the practice. 

Tximista initially featured its grape varietal on the label. “I’m very proud of the fact that this is 100 percent organic, sustainably made, DO certified Hondarrabi, and I wanted that to be on the label—it’s a point of honor for the people who make this with me,” O’Brien says. But when the initial shipment arrived in the United States, the U.S. Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) pulled back on its initial approval of the label. 

After six months of legal wrangling, during which time the vermouth wasn’t allowed to be sold, the agency relented somewhat and sent someone in to paste a tiny slip of paper on every single bottle’s label to obscure the varietal’s name. “Where my labels now say ‘Lightning in a Bottle,’ it used to say ‘100 percent Hondarrabi Zuri.’ Which is crazy,” O’Brien says.

Tximista isn’t the only vermouth to run into such red-tape headaches. In Europe, bottles of Baldoria Orange vermouth bear the wine’s vintage—perhaps the first vintage-dated vermouth on the market. U.S. regulations, however, prohibit such clarity and transparency. “The wine shines in Baldoria Orange because it’s a very unique vintage and a very unique wine,” Schmidt says. “But the TTB doesn’t allow us to call it an orange wine vermouth on the label. We call it Amber, and it is a vintage wine, but we can’t say so on the label.”

O’Brien says the rules may trace back to the influence of some large producers who source cheap, bulk wine for making vermouth. In such cases, the wine varietals may change based on cost and availability, or may include grapes or styles deemed substandard. 

“The law was made so they wouldn’t have to disclose what’s in it,” O’Brien says. “In order to avoid that, they make it so you can’t [disclose wine details], which is not transparent. But what are you gonna do?”

Tximista’s legal tussle over the label may have slowed its entry to the U.S. market, but it culminated five years of work to put it all together. To make Tximista, O’Brien first convinced sisters Onditz and Itziar Eizagirre, who run a small winery, Talai Berri, in Zarautz, Spain, to make the Txakoli for his vermouth. The actual production of Tximista takes place at Bodega Yzaguirre’s vermouth facilities near Tarragona.

Even for these producers, the notion of a wine-driven, Txakoli-focused vermouth was a hard sell. And it took plenty of time and effort to build a trusting working relationship. “It wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the amazing women who own the winery. It took me two years to get them to agree to this,” O’Brien says. 

The Cocktail Crowd

An underlying love of wine may be the prompt for many of these producers, and bartenders are increasingly noticing the potent value these wine-focused vermouths can bring to the table. 

“Some producers are paying more attention to the base wine they use for vermouths, and that gives layers of complexity to vermouths that, before, wasn’t there,” says Alf del Portillo, who, along with Marta Premoli, owns and operates the cocktail bar Quattro Teste in Lisbon, Portugal. Quattro Teste serves some of these wine-focused vermouths on their own, as well as in cocktails like the Aperitivo al Caffè, with tequila, manzanilla sherry, Cocchi Americano, Baldoria Orange vermouth, and coffee bitters.

“Bartenders are trying to find these different products because anyone can make a Negroni at home. But if you have a special vermouth from a rare country … then you have something interesting to play with.”—Alvaro Aniano

“As a bartender, I remember telling [my partners] we need to get a product that can make a good Negroni, a good Americano,” Aniano says of Vermut Flores. “Bartenders are trying to find these different products because anyone can make a Negroni at home. But if you have a special vermouth from a rare country (because nobody knows Uruguay—we aren’t famous for wine like Argentina or Chile), then you have something interesting to play with. I think we have good timing for the new cocktail culture and this kind of endless searching for new ingredients.”

O’Brien notes that he’s fond of Tximista in classic cocktails such as a Fifty-Fifty Martini, a Negroni, and a Bamboo. But the wine’s character shines particularly brightly in contemporary cocktails. “When I pair it with mezcal, when I pair it with tequila, it has a life of its own that I don’t get from other vermouth,” he says. 

He’s talking about Tximista, but the point holds true for many of these wine-focused vermouths. “I think a lot of people’s first experiences with vermouth doesn’t lend them to remember that vermouth is something that can be drunk on its own. They’re drinking something that’s mass-produced and meant to be put into big, bold cocktails,” he says. “A wine-forward vermouth that has both the legs to stand on its own, and goes great in classics, then has the ability to create a whole new generation of cocktails.”