I’ve been messing around with dry vermouth for a couple months now and figured it was time to move on to sweet vermouth. I will also be participating in a vermouth tasting event in February and it will be very interesting to see how some house made vermouths stand up to the mass produced brands. If you would like an extremely short history of vermouth check out my post on dry vermouth.
Sweet vermouth is pretty fun to mess around with and like dry vermouth, the possibilities are endless. You can add pretty much whatever you want, try switching out the base wine, use a different liquor to fortify, or try using different herbs and spices. Here is a base line recipe to follow in making your own house made sweet vermouth.
Sweet Vermouth
2 oz brandy (try other liquors)
1/2 teaspoon fresh chopped ginger
1/4 pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon wormwood
1/8 teaspoon gentian
4 whole cloves
4 whole peppercorns
Zest of half a naval orange (try other fruits!)
Zest of half a lemon
3/4 cup caramelized sugar (try brown, muscado, or white sugars)
1 bottle dessert/sweet wine (I used Egri Muskotaly) (try any base wine)
Combine all but the brandy into a pot and slowly bring to a boil. Boil only for a couple minutes then bring down to a warm/simmer. Add the brandy, let sit for about twenty minutes to infuse everything into the wine, strain and refrigerate overnight.
If you use cheap wine (no reason to use pricey wine) and inexpensive ingredients, offering a house made vermouth can be cost effective and practical for your bar. I find that refrigerating over night “finishes” the infusion by letting everything sit together. There is a noticeably richer taste after a day or so.
By: Mark Sexauer
Filed under: Infusions, Techniques
Oh, it sounds absolutely wonderful. You are an artist, sir.
Thanks very much for this recipe! The vermouth is absolutely splendid! A few remarks: I misread the recipe and used an half teaspoon of wormwood instead of 1/8 t. Mine came out rather herbal, but I quite like it; between the wormwood and gentian, it has something of the green and bitter profile of Campari. Also, this is a matter of taste, but next time I’ll substantially reduce the amount of sugar that I use. For my base, I used Charles Shaw’s merlot (a.k.a. Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe) rather than a dessert wine, but I still found the vermouth rather too sweet and syrupy in the end. I’ll perhaps halve the sugar in the future (although it might have made a difference, too, that I used an unrefined sugar, as you suggested). I must say, though, that using caramelized sugar is a stroke of genius. So thanks for the great recipe! I’ve never had a better Manhattan than the one I made myself the other day with this vermouth and a dash of my homemade Chai bitters.
Thank you much for the feedback, I have since done many different versions of this vermouth and making it less sweet is one of the big changes. The trick is, like bitters, to make a balance of sweet and bitter!!! I was thinking early on that sweeter is better, but not so much…. good luck and happy expermenting!
thanks so much,please keep in touch i love mixiologi.