I have previously made a writeup on the Martini, writing about the one with sweet vermouth. Now this week I will use the Martini to show how one can use the concept of the Martini to use an ingredient with a limited shelf life.

Fortified wines have a limited shelf life. For me that makes me drinking cocktails with a certain type of fortified wine when I have a bottle open in my bar. However, if you feel like you have to make a cocktail with a certain ingredient you might feel yourself locked into a few cocktails with small amounts of variation. For the sake of that I will share an alternative to the Martini, and also make suggestions on how fortified wines can be used in a cocktail like this. The main thing you need to have in mind is what type of fortified wine it is, as my own experience doesn’t reach much further than port, vermouth, sherry and Lillet style fortified wines I will use the characteristics of those to share my thoughts. In all these variations I will pair the fortified wine with a spirit to make a Martini/Manhattan variation. I will also suggest a type of bitters to use to add another layer of complexity.

With a fortified wine like vermouth it is quite easy to find a suiting spirit to mix it with. The herbs and sweetness pairs well with both whiskey and gin. Sweet vermouths work slightly better with whiskey and dry with gin. For heavier or spicier drinks, I would use aromatic bitters, like Angostura, for lighter drinks I would use orange or citrus bitters. That said, it may be interesting to also combine sweet and dry vermouth as well as the bitters.

Fortified wines like sherry, especially the dry variations, tend to work quite decently with gin and fantastically well with rum. The nuttiness that an oloroso or amontillado sherry brings to the sweetness of the rum tends to harmonise usually creating nice results. Bitters that could be used are not as specific as previous examples, if you use gin, I would recommend citrus bitters. However, if you use rum, the bitters that you can use are more or less any kind you have on your hands. If you can get your hands on chocolate or coffee bitters or something like that it would probably be the most interesting martini variation you can make if you use rum and sherry in combination with those.

Port is probably the fortified wine that I don’t think works in this type of drink. While it would probably make a nice cocktail if mixed with brandy, any other spirit I feel would not be suited for this combination. On the other hand, port wine may be fantastic in more complex fruity cocktails with berries. The main difficulty with port wine, is that it brings too much sweetness and fruit flavour, thus it will need other complementing elements.

Now with the Lillet style fortified wines of which I consider Cocchi Americano to be, they usually pair well with gin and citrus or orange bitters. In the case of this week’s cocktail, the wine adds sweetness to the gin, as well as some bitter components through the flavourings, especially the quinine. The orange bitters add citrus to the cocktail, which gin usually is flavoured with as well. The cocktail becomes botanical with a nice rounding sweetness and some bitterness adding complexity. It is a nice cocktail that is crisp strong, perhaps not easy to drink however it is nevertheless a cocktail I would recommend of you have an open bottle of Cocchi Americano at hand.

My Recipe:

• 2 oz (6 cl) Gin
• 1 oz (3 cl) Cocchi Americano
• 2 dashes Orange Bitters

Add the ingredients to a mixing glass with ice, stir to chill and dilute. Strain into a chilled Nick and Nora glass and garnish with a lemon twist.