When I have a bottle of vermouth, I sometimes ask myself “what cocktail can I make with this?”. Before I answer that question, I will begin with answering why that is an important question to ask. Where all this start is that vermouth is a fortified wine. It is made by flavouring a wine with herbs and increasing the alcohol content. There are more kinds of fortified wines than vermouth, like sherry, port and madeira for instance. Vermouth is special in that it is flavoured with herbs. When whines are exposed to air, an oxidation process that starts causing the wine to deteriorate. For white wines this process is quick, for red wines it is slightly slower. The main characteristic of fortified wines is that is higher in alcohol content, which slows down the oxidation process. What that means is that fortified wines deteriorate slower than normal wines, that however, does not mean they do not deteriorate at all. With fortified wines like vermouth it is important to know they will go bad once opened. For a bottle of sweet vermouth, I usually make sure to use them within 2-3 months after opening them. This leads to the reason why I ask myself the question I opened this post with. The reason is that if I don’t use the vermouth within a certain amount of time, the vermouth is better used when it is poured down the drain than in a cocktail and if I have a nice vermouth like Carpano Antica, I prefer to use as much of the bottle as possible.
In the past few weeks I have posted a few cocktails with sweet vermouth, one of the most important reasons is to have a few alternatives to choose from when trying to use the bottle of vermouth you have open. Many of the cocktails are similar in varying degrees of complexity. To me it is important to cover a few different types and different levels of complexity since everyone does not have all ingredients at home and it may be interesting to hve some alternatives when using vermouth. Thus, this is an alternative to complement the previous posts.
This cocktail has been documented as far back as 1916 making it more than 100 years old. I don’t recognise it as one of the usual cocktails that are classics containing vermouth. That said it is actually quite interesting, using Irish whiskey as the base, I used a single malt, to balance the vermouth of the cocktail. Though some add bitters, I did not and probably should have
My Recipe:
- 2 oz (6 cl) Irish Whiskey
- 1 oz (3 cl) Sweet Vermouth
- Absinthe
Add the whiskey and vermouth to a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Rinse a chilled Nick and Nora glass with absinthe and strain the stirred cocktail into the absinthe-rinsed glass and serve ungarnished.
