vermouth-based cocktails.

Vermouths from Italy and France were available in some American markets as early as the late 1830s, but weren’t in wide use until the 1880s, when the wine abruptly appeared as a fully adopted bar ingredient. See vermouth. By the turn of the twentieth century, vermouth was largely defining cocktail culture.

One of the first recorded applications of vermouth was as a base ingredient in the Vermouth Cocktail (vermouth plus bitters, gum syrup, and/or maraschino liqueur); that was in 1868, when it was served at a banquet for the Sorosis Club, a women’s literary association, in New York. Also present from the outset were a few variations on the already-common Gin Cocktail, Improved Gin Cocktail, Whisky Cocktail, and Improved Whisky Cocktail—antecedents to the Martini, Martinez, Manhattan, and Saratoga, respectively—by integrating vermouth alongside the given gin or whisky base. See Martini; Martinez; Manhattan Cocktail; and Saratoga. Theodore Proulx most incisively expressed the logic in 1888: “[The Manhattan] is made the same way as any other cocktail, except that you will use one-half vermouth and one-half whisky in place of all whisky, omitting absinthe,” and “[The Martini] is half Old Tom gin and half vermouth made like any other cocktail; no absinthe.” In both cases, Proulx was referring to Italian (red) vermouth, but dry vermouth from Marseilles was also available and crops up in other sources, treated similarly.

Over the course of the next forty years and beyond, vermouth would be tried in combination with virtually every other available cocktail ingredient, leaving literally thousands of recipes in the public record. A few, such as the Bronx Cocktail, enjoyed great popularity in their day. See Bronx Cocktail. Other celebrated vermouth “classics”—some obscure in their day—include the Negroni, Americano, El Presidente, Saratoga, Bijou, Blood and Sand, Vieux Carré, Blackthorn, and Rose. See Negroni; Americano; El Presidente; Bijou Cocktail; Blood and Sand; Vieux Carré; Blackthorn Cocktail; and Rose. (Another once-popular classic, the Dubonnet Cocktail, was based on Dubonnet quinquina, a cousin of vermouth.) See Dubonnet Cocktail. Throughout, however, the Martini and Manhattan remained unremittingly popular, spawning many permutations and variations.

Most nineteenth-century vermouth-cocktail recipes refer to just “vermouth,” “vino vermouth,” or “Italian vermouth” when referencing what we now think of as red, or sweet, vermouth and to “French vermouth” to call out what we now think of as dry vermouth. The basis for this is that in the nineteenth century, vermouth bottle labels were often inscrutable beyond a brand name and the country of origin, and unlike today, brands weren’t marketing multiple styles of vermouth—Italian companies made darker-colored, sweeter vermouth, and French companies made drier, lighter-colored vermouths. This situation began to change around the turn of the twentieth century, when market leaders such as Martini & Rossi diversified their product lines, introducing their own interpretations of dry vermouth and white vermouth (also called bianco or blanc vermouth). See Martini & Rossi. While white vermouth would remain fairly obscure until recently, dry vermouth and sweet vermouth (which meant red vermouth) began appearing on labels and in the literature.

Vermouth is often employed in stronger, stirred cocktails; the combination of vermouth with citrus juice is relatively rare, but not unheard of. See Clover Club and Cohasset Punch. For a time beginning in the 1910s, it was common to refer to cocktails that contained equal portions of red and dry vermouths (among other ingredients) as “perfect” (e.g., the Perfect Martini uses an equal mixture of red and dry vermouths instead of one or the other). See Perfect. While innumerable cocktails have been invented since the 1910s that draw on vermouth, it is fair to say that by the end of that decade all of the major lines of development that they would follow were explored.

“The Bohemian Banquet to the Sorosisians.” New York Herald, June 14, 1868, 7.

Byron, O. H. The Modern Bartender’s Guide. New York: Excelsior, 1884.

Jerry Thomas. The Bar-Tender’s Guide. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1887.

Proulx, Theodore. Bartender’s Manual. Chicago: Theodore Proulx, 1888.

Wondrich, David. Imbibe!, 2nd ed. New York: Perigee, 2015.

By: Martin DoudoroffSee vermouth.See Martini; Martinez; Manhattan Cocktail;, Saratoga.See Bronx Cocktail.See Negroni; Americano; El Presidente; Bijou Cocktail; Blood, Sand; Vieux Carré; Blackthorn Cocktail;, Rose.See Dubonnet Cocktail.See Martini & Rossi.See Clover Club, Cohasset Punch.See Perfect.