Cocktails with Dry vermouth
Dry vermouth is an aromatized fortified white wine built on wormwood and other botanicals, and made in the dry style.
ABV15–18%
Substitutes for Dry vermouth
A drier or sweeter bottle is easy to correct for; the herbal depth underneath is not, and a plain white wine with a dash of bitters only gestures at it. Watch the sugar: the styles either side of dry differ by a factor of two or more.
On the label
- “vermouth”
- A legal category, not a style word. At least 75% of the bottle must be wine, it has to be flavored with at least one Artemisia — wormwood — herb, and it must sit between 14.5% and 22% ABV. Drop the wormwood and it is an aromatized wine, not a vermouth.
- “dry” / “extra dry”
- Under 50 grams of sugar per liter. Dry vermouth is still a wine with sugar in it — just far less than a rosso.
Often confused with
Both are wormwood-flavored aromatized wines, but dry vermouth has under 50 g/L sugar and is pale, while sweet vermouth has 130 g/L or more and is usually colored. Not interchangeable where sweetness and color matter.
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