The practice of adding fruits, herbs, spices, and barks to wine to enhance their flavor and aroma dates back more than 4,000 years. Ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Romans all added botanicals to wine often for medicinal purposes. However, many of the aromatized wine and vermouth styles we know today were born in the Kingdom of Sardinia, that spanned eastern France and western Italy, during the 18th century. Vermouth, an aromatized wine made with wormwood and other botanicals, quickly became the darlings of the 19th century bartenders. Sweet vermouths from Italy and dry vermouths from France quickly became indispensable for many classic cocktails such as the manhattan, martini, and negroni. Today, there is a wide variety of classic and modern variations of vermouths and aromatized wines from Italy, France, Spain, and the United States.
While vermouths and aromatized wines can be made anywhere in the world, their historic homes are in Torino, Italy and Spain as well as Chambéry and Marseilles, France.
Because vermouth and aromatized wines are broadly defined by a few simple factors such as color, sugar content, and one or two primary ingredients, there is an incredible variety of flavors to choose from.
Vermouth is primarily categorized by its sugar content:
-Extra dry is anything with less than 30g/l of sugar
-Dry is anything less than 50g/l
-Sweet (both white and red) are those above 130g/l.
While the EU requires vermouth to include wormwood the US does not so most American made “vermouths” are actually aromatized wines without wormwood.
Aromatized wines are often made by using neutral spirits to extract the botanical flavors which are added later to the base wine and sugar. Some aromatized wines will also add caramel coloring at this point to darken the color. Once combined, these mixtures are often left to rest in a stainless steel vat or exhausted barrel. After the rest period, the aromatized wine is lightly filtered and bottled.
An aromatized wine that is flavored primarily with wormwood and a variety of other botanicals. Vermouth gets its name from the German word for wormwood, wermut. Vermouth can be made with either white or red wine as its base and is usually fortified with the addition of neutral brandy, to increase its stability and shelf life. Vermouth also has added sugar, though the amount can vary from as little as 27g/l for extra dry to 190g/l for sweet.
Pronounced ken-KEE-na, quinquina is a style of aromatized wine that is flavored with chinchona bark, which is the original source of quinine. Some early quinquinas were originally intended for the French foreign legion in Algeria. Americano: An Italian style of aromatized wines with increased bitterness from the addition of gentian and wormwood. Americano’s name comes from amer, the Italian root word for bitterness.
An aromatized wine made by infusing barolo wine with quinine and other botanicals. Barolo chinato (pronounced kee-NOT-oh) began in the 19th century as a tonic to cure various ailments, but today is largely enjoyed as an after dinner digestive.
Any wine served before a meal meant to open the appetite. Traditionally, many aperitif wines were aromatized with herbs that were thought to be good for the stomach or digestion.