Manhattan Calling: Vermouth!

My refrigerator’s always crowded with a bunch of bottles of vermouth and related wines—probably a typical state of affairs for a cocktail enthusiast. You might think my current Manhattan kick should help use all that stuff down but it’ll probably have the opposite effect. In fact, it already has. I try to restrain myself and concentrate on drinks that can be made from the open ones, but vermouths are not quite interchangeable and I want them all.



Swell sweet vermouth links in no particular order:

Vermouth 101 by Martin Doudoroff.

The folks at Summer Fruit Cup review an astonishing total of 18 red vermouths.

Make vermouth! Haven’t tried myself but Serious Eats has a recipe.

French vermouth production at Noilly Prat with Camper English at Alcademics.

Classic Manhattan vermouth taste test post by Anita at Married with Dinner.

Penthouse and Attic

By a strange and wonderful coincidence, a bottle of ouzo was given to me by another colleague one year after the previous bottle. Santa must’ve heard I like anise or something. Whatever’s going on out there, I just wanna say to one and all that ouzo makes a fine gift. Really digging the ouzo.

Last year, I complimented it with dry vermouth, so I decided to try it with sweet vermouth instead. Again, it’s soft and elegant with a little vanilla note that’s rich without being too candy.



Penthouse and Attic

• 2 oz dry gin
• 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica)
• 1/4 ouzo (Metaxa)
• 2 dashes Regans’s No. 6 Orange Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Laphroaig Rob Roy

The first Rob Roy I tasted was made by a bartender who had no idea what it was supposed to be like. I was served a weird, wimpy drink so vile that it took years to get over before trying another. (And that was lousy too.) Light blended scotch drowned in a sea of melting bar ice and thin, nasty vermouth, no bitters. You want a cherry with that? How about one of them little plastic stir jobbies?

For a cocktail as simple as this one, the base spirit should have enough guts to define the drink, and from the moment I saw gaz regan do the Laphroaig Rob Roy, I knew I had to have one. It just sounded right. There was smoke and velvet, anise and iodine. A wild, regal, intense Rob Roy that might wield the bagpipes as a deadly weapon. Aye.



Laphroaig Rob Roy

• 2 oz Laphroaig 10 Year Old
• 1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
• 4 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. I serve this with a broad, thin, rough-edged orange twist (sharp vegetable peeler), and express the oil lavishly over the drink. For the vermouth, I like Punt e Mes, though lately I’ve been doing it with Dolin.
SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM A RECIPE BY GAZ REGAN

For a kickass post on the same drink, visit The Sugar House Blog.

You can also see gaz himself in action on YouTube.

Fanciulli Cocktail

STANLEY: Liquor goes fast in hot weather. Have a shot?
BLANCHE: No—I—rarely touch it.
STANLEY: Some people rarely touch it, but it touches them often.

—Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

By 7 o’clock this morning, it was already unusually warm in San Francisco. A hot day here is something of an occasion, whether you like it or you don’t. Streets and sidewalk cafés fill with semi-clad people. For the thirsty who would prefer an unsweetened iced coffee to a soda in such weather, there is the Fanciulli. It’s a refreshingly bitter frappé of bourbon, sweet vermouth and Fernet-Branca, and a potent aid in reviving the wilted. This drink is named for an Italian-American band leader and composer of marches and operas. You can read more about him and the Fanciulli in the WSJ and from Kevin Patterson. The version of the drink here is from the CocktailDB.



Fanciulli
In a glass packed with crushed ice, build:

• 1 oz bourbon (Wild Turkey 101)
• 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Punt e Mes)
• 1/4 oz Fernet-Branca

Serve in a cocktail glass. (Used a 4.5 oz old fashioned.)
SOURCE: COCKTAILDB

Star Cocktail

Sometimes I get edgy and bored because I can’t think what to make, and leaf restlessly through page after page of recipes, hoping something will catch my eye. Luckily, the Star did. It was a nice surprise—big, round, mellow, fruity but subtly so. I found it in David Wondrich’s Imbibe! and the housemate and I agreed that it has the richness we associate with a 19th-century cocktail.



Star Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz apple brandy (Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy)
  
• 1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Punt e Mes)
  
• 1 dash curacao
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM DAVID WONDRICH, IMBIBE!, FROM GEORGE J. KAPPELER, MODERN AMERICAN DRINKS