Vermouth is a liquor made from wine, with a number of different herbs added for flavor. It is known as an aromatized liquor, and some people refer to it as a fortified wine – although strictly speaking, a fortified wine usually has alcohol added to it to increase its potency, while vermouth uses the alcohol for the flavor it imparts. Vermouth is probably best known for its role in the popular cocktail, the martini. Indeed, the most popular brand of vermouth is the Italian brand, Martini & Rossi, whose name most likely gave rise to the name of the cocktail. While in America and Britain, if one orders a martini, one is likely to get a gin or vodka cocktail, in other regions of the world, ordering a martini will get you a glass of Martini & Rossi’s sweet vermouth – popular as an aperitif.

There are a few different types of vermouth, ranging from the dry vermouth used in martini cocktails to the very sweet white vermouth used as an aperitif. Sweet red vermouth also exists, although it is less sweet than its white cousin, and semi-sweet vermouth that falls somewhere between dry and red is used as a mixer sometimes. Dry vermouth is approximately 18% alcohol and has under 7% residual sugar left, while sweeter vermouths are around 15% alcohol and may have as much as 15% residual sugar remaining.

Vermouth was created in the late 18th century by an Italian and was originally used as a tonic drink because of the healing herbs that went into its creation. These herbs included wormwood, nutmeg, coriander, juniper, orange peel, cloves, marjoram, and cinnamon. The name vermouth comes from the German word Wermutkraut, which is the name for the wormwood plant. Wormwood, an herb also found in absinthe, helps to give vermouth its distinctive flavor. These aromatic herbs, although now a signature part of the drink’s taste, were originally used simply as an easy way to cover the flavor of the cheap wines used to produce large quantities of vermouth.

Early vermouth was all sweet, made from both red and white wines, and enjoyed primarily as an aperitif on its own. The French are usually credited with the invention of dry vermouth, sometime in the early 19th century, and to this day, France is often associated with drier white vermouths, and Italy with sweeter red vermouths, though both nations produce both types in large quantities.