DIY Sweet Vermouth Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What ingredients are in sweet vermouth? ›

Vermouth is made using a white wine base (min 75% of the finished product), which can be a blend of wines. This is then mixed together with sugar, a botanical distillate, and a spirit to reach the preferred ABV level, usually 16-22% ABV.

According to Italian law, vermouth is a product made up of at least 75% wine, fortified and flavored with an alcoholic infusion of herbs and spices which must include artemisia (mugwort), in the Pontica and Absinthium varieties. It is this herb and its dried buds that mainly characterizes the recipe of vermouth.

For sweet vermouths, sugar syrup is added before the wine is fortified with extra alcohol. The added alcohol is usually a neutral grape spirit, but may also come from vegetable sources such as sugar beets. The wine is then placed in large barrels or tanks to which the dry ingredients have already been added.

Vermouths like Martini are fortified wines that oxidise quickly so once opened, store in the fridge and drink within a maximum of three months but ideally finish it within the first month. After that point, there will be no harmful effects to you, but the taste will be pretty nasty.

Haus spiced cherry apéritif is a great substitute for sweet vermouth wherever it may be called for, especially if you want to bring a fruity overtone to a drink. We love making our Negronis with Spiced Cherry instead of sweet vermouth, as it brings something very intriguing to the gin and the bitter Campari.

"Dry vermouth is leaner, tart, herbaceous, and dry, used in drinks like the martini," McLuen explains. While McLuen summarizes white vermouth as "rich, tart, floral, and pleasantly sweet," sweet vermouth is a rich, spiced and herbaceous drink, often used in drinks like the Manhattan and the Negroni.

Wormwood or Artemisia, in Latin, is the quintessential herb, without which a vermouth quite simply, isn't a vermouth. The base formula for any drink calling itself vermouth must be 75% wine and wormwood, one of the botanicals used.

Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium)

The word “vermouth” derives from the German word for wormwood (“wermut”), so it's only natural that the bitter herb became a common ingredient in not only vermouth, but also absinthe.

Vermouth is actually incredibly generous with flavor, but its complexity makes it more of a backbone/background component to co*cktails (compared with the pronounced bitter grapefruit of a Campari or the cool anise intensity of Absinthe). And that applies whether you're talking about sweet or dry vermouth.

Which sweet vermouth for Negroni? ›

Cocchi Vermouth di Torino

“The one vermouth to rule them all,” says Schmidt. “[Cocchi] leads to optimal balance and texture while blending perfectly with dry gin. It's sweet, balanced, and complex with notes of vanilla, and cinnamon tempered with a bit of bitter orange.”

Conclusion: Refrigeration is plenty effective for vermouth storage up to one month. If you're going to finish your vermouth within a month, as long as you keep it in the fridge, you're good.

Best Overall: Dolin Dry Vermouth de Chambery

“London dry-style gins need bigger, bolder vermouths,” he says. Kotsiras agrees. “If you're after a classic gin Martini with London dry gin, I'm always reaching for Dolin,” he says. “It's flavorful enough and plays a great supporting role while letting your gin shine.”

After a month, most tasters found that both vermouths stored in the pantry had lost their citrusy aroma and tasted flat. The vermouths stored in the refrigerator remained suitable for sipping for two months before they started tasting medicinal and somewhat bitter.

Likewise, because vermouth is a fortified wine, it is often infused with botanicals, which can be roots, barks, flowers, seeds, herbs, and spices that may contain nuts, sulfites, and other allergens. If you are allergic to nuts, seeds, or sulfites, you may want to avoid drinking vermouth.

Dry vermouths are made using a white wine base and generally contain less than 50 grams of sugar per liter. Sweet vermouths are traditionally made from red wine, though some feature white wine and are colored with caramel. Sweet vermouth is fuller-bodied than white and contains around 150 grams of sugar per liter.

People with grape allergies need to avoid wine and distilled spirits made with grapes, including cognac, ouzo, and vermouth.

Dry vermouth is well known for being used in the Martini. It has little to no sugar added and will taste more herbaceous but less bitter. Sweet vermouth has, unsurprisingly, a higher amount of sugar added and is often brownish red from caramel coloring (almost all vermouths are made from white wine).