Summer in Spain is warm, steamy and vermouth-scented.
We quickly graduate from robust riojas to cloudy ciders served with freshly-fried croquettes. We sample flinty Basque txacolis at ostentatiously trendy pintxo bars. Drink tall, chilled glasses of Mahou, the capital’s popular pilsner, with crackly bags of potato crisps. Then, we discover vermouth, heady, herbaceous and deliciously pungent, served with a bright tangle of orange peels. We’re hooked.
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s Spanish song ‘Despacito’ is the country’s current soundtrack, blasting with equal fervour in clubs and supermarkets, and vermouth is its contemporary drink of choice. ‘Despacito’, an essentially Spanish track, has been sexed-up, glossed and accessorised so skilfully that it has become the world’s most streamed music track in just six months, with about 4.6 billion plays across streaming platforms, according to Universal Music. Similarly, vermouth, once proudly provincial, is being downed in bars from London to San Francisco, in its current slick, urbane, updated avatar.
At a traditional bodega, sweltering with packed crowds, in Madrid’s arty Lavapies district, we drink it at the bar standing up, along with Patitas de Calamar, freshly fried squid feet. In the city’s cavernous indoor markets, filled with raucous families, we hurriedly down a glass (or three) between buying bushels of juicy cherries, sticky pista nougat and paper-thin slices of Jamón ibérico.
From granny’s closet
At the immensely Instagrammable Mercado de San Miguel — a glamorous bartender serves it on tap, sliding our glasses across the bar along with a bowl of addictively tart green olives.
“This used to be the drink of our grandmothers,” she says, before attending to a group of excitable Japanese tourists, who attempt to order everything off the menu. The options are sweet and dry. If you’re a first-timer, she suggests you go with the sweet version. Served with a splash of soda and twist of orange peel, the drink is bright with an alluring chorus of synchronised flavours. I’m familiar with it as a cocktail ingredient — it is essential in Martinis, Negronis and Manhattans — but really comes into its own when treated as the headliner instead of just another spot boy.
This is an aromatised, fortified wine, flavoured with botanicals. Manufacturers start with a neutral grape wine, then add alcohol and a signature blend of about 40 or more, often bitter, botanicals, which include herbs, roots, barks, flowers, seeds and spices. The most notorious of these is wormwood, also present in absinthe. (Incidentally, vermouth is derived from the German word for wormwood, which is ‘wermut’.)
Italian origins
The drink was first produced in Turin, Italy, in the mid-18th Century, according to liquor historians (and what a fun job that must be!). Italian and French blends have defined the drink internationally, some of the best known brands are Italian Martini and Rossi, Cinzano and French Noilly Prat. Spain, however, has some very high quality versions. There are those made by established companies, usually in Reus, like Yzaguirre and Miro. There are also seasonal, hyper-local producers making Spanish vermouth, which is lighter and sweeter than the Italian and French versions.
You can order yours extra-dry white, sweet white, red, amber and even as a rosé. Admittedly, the extra-dry versions take some getting used to; they’re sharp and austere. Dry has a touch more flavour; think of an arid land in spring time. Then comes the sweet variety, reminiscent of a lush, moist, tropical forest.
In America, the Quady winery makes Vya, an artisanal version that uses botanicals from India, Albania, Russia, Spain and Morocco. Australian Regal Rogue range marries a Hunter Valley Semillon with native lemon myrtle, desert limes, thyme and elderflower. The Ethicurean restaurant in Somerset has a house vermouth called The Collector, which incorporates 20 botanicals grown in their garden, including bay, rosemary, and yarrow. In London, Mele e Pere, which has been making its own version for five years, even has a ‘vermouthier-in-chief’ called Ed, who teaches customers how to blend their own for £25 a night.
Guide to vermouth
At a bookstore in San Sebastian, I stumble upon Ester Bachs Romaguera’s Guía del vermut (Vermouth Guide). The lady who runs the bookstore spots me flipping through the Spanish book, and insists I visit Bar Roberto for a drink. This is where I finally learn how to make the perfect cocktail: and it stars vermouth, of course.
In the tiny wooden bar, which is standing room only, the friendly proprietor hands me a complimentary gilda, comprising deftly skewered mellow guindilla chillies, anchovies and olive, then pours out a sweet vermouth with a flourish. His bar blackboard lists about 20 varieties, and the shelves behind him groan with bottles from all over the world. He adds ice cubes, bitters, netted orange zest and an olive-laced toothpick. I take a sip: It’s like rain in a jungle on a warm summer day.
A loyal Roberto customer smiles and says, “I have eaten a smoked sardine and drunk a vermouth that has lifted my beret.” (Or at least that’s what Google Translate Spanish to English says.) Honestly, I couldn’t have put it better.
