Only a decade in the past, “sherry vermouth” may have simply been dismissed as a replica enhancing error—a lacking conjunction, maybe? However within the intervening years, sherry producers have taken to reviving a convention that’s really older than one would possibly suppose.
Some background: From the late 1800s via the mid-Twentieth century, the Sherry Triangle’s bodegas used sherry as a base for a variety of aromatized merchandise, from vermouth to quinquina wines (Jerez Quinado), to compete not simply with homegrown Catalonian vermouth, however the already well-established vermouth di Torino and the myriad quinine-based aperitif wines that France was (and nonetheless is) busy churning out. This subset of sherry manufacturing continued apace till the Nineteen Sixties, when these merchandise (and sherry itself) started their gradual decline. Quick-forward to in the present day, and Vermut de Jerez isn’t solely amid a revival, however it’s starting to look as variable and numerous because the wines that it’s based mostly upon.
Whereas many producers depend on historic recipes or approximations of them (Valdespino, Barbadillo), some have taken to riffing. Lustau, for example, makes three vermouth expressions; its rosado relies on palomino fino and moscatel grapes, with a contact of tintilla de rota (a uncommon native pink grape) to attain its pink hue. González Byass not too long ago launched its La Copa Additional Seco, which is a solution to the dry vermouths of Chambéry or Marseille. This expression, nevertheless, achieves a profile that’s wholly distinctive, combining the yeasty, saline flavors of biologically aged, non-oxidative sherry—that’s, fino or manzanilla—with aromatics and the marginally larger alcoholic spine that defines vermouth.
The most recent entry into the canon, Barbadillo’s Atamán, finds a center means, threading between the candy vermouth bottlings which might be extra intently aligned with the area’s previous and the inimitable biologically aged sherry profile that González Byass is attempting to channel with its further dry. Barbadillo hails from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the sherry city answerable for manzanilla, which Atamán makes use of as its base. It’s a leaner, barely extra bitter, and drier tackle candy vermouth.
It and its brethren are carving out an identification for a Spanish vermouth that feels distinct from the French and the Italians, however nonetheless attracts on an extended historical past of manufacturing and base wines which might be in a class all their very own. So, whereas the Catalonians could proceed to put declare to the tradition of vermouth consumption in Spain, it might be the Andalucians that find yourself supplying it.
