FOR many people, the only experience of vermouth used to come in the form of an ancient bottle hidden at the back of the drinks cabinet. It would sit—mysterious and sometimes menacing—next to the holiday ouzo and Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Which is all wrong; because, in fact, vermouth should be kept refrigerated and consumed within two weeks, not left to gather dust for 20 years.
Drunk properly, it has much to offer: the beauty of vermouth is that it can be enjoyed both as a stand-alone drink or as a key aromatic ingredient in cocktails. It is superb as a pairing for food or as a digestif. For bartenders and cocktail aficionados, it has long been a crucial ingredient for drinks such as the negroni, at once sweet, bold and bitter and so popular that it has a dedicated week in the calendar. Now, however, vermouth is enjoying a wider revival. Although there once were only a handful of commercial producers across the world, there are now dozens in almost every wine-making nation, including in the UK.
Vermouth is a fortified wine and falls into a category known as ‘aromatised wines’ or wine-based aperitifs. Simply put, it is made with a base wine, infused with lots of botanicals, including herbs, roots, barks and spices, sweetened with caramel or mistelle (an unfermented grape juice with added alcohol to cease fermentation). To be a true vermouth, however, it should contain wormwood or one of the 400 possible members of the Artemisia species, which provides one part of the satisfying bitterness.
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Denne historien er fra April 12, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.