Uncouth Vermouth

The label on Uncouth Vermouth “bears the silhouette of a woman … uncouthly sticking a finger up her nose,” reports Alice Feiring in The New York Times (2/13/13). Its maker, 29-year-old Bianca Miraglia, got into making vermouth because she didn’t have the patience for winemaking, and was put off by the price tag on “her favorite vermouth, the Mauro Vergano.” So, she started experimenting, often using herbs grown in her mother’s garden, “and improvised until she had something that satisfied her.”

Bianca compares making vermouth to “brewing a really great cup of tea. She warms wine on her stovetop, adds mostly foraged herbs and whatever she has pushed through her juicer. She strains but never filters, so her vermouths are often cloudy. Then she adds brandy to fortify the wine to 18 percent alcohol, which preserves the fresh ingredients. She lets it settle for a few days … Her Uncouth flavors include a zingy Serrano chile lavender and a dry, tannic apple mint.”

Hers is a distinctly American vermouth, although it does contain wormwood, a bitter herb required by law in European vermouths “(the wine’s name derives from ‘wermut,’ the German word for the herb).” Bianca has tried butternut squash, beets and even thought about adding arugula to her vermouth. Purists say this isn’t really vermouth, but Adam Ford, who markets wormwood-free Atsby vermouth, says, “If it looks like vermouth, smells like vermouth and acts like vermouth, it is vermouth … In America,” he says, “we are free from the rules.”