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
The easy fix is another dry vermouth. Without one, bianco or blanc vermouth is the closest bottle. It is a sweet style and makes the drink noticeably sweeter, so start with two-thirds of the measure and taste. A dry white wine with a dash of orange bitters is a rough stand-in: it has the dryness but not the herbs or the strength.
Under EU rules, a vermouth labeled sweet has 130 g of sugar per liter or more, and one labeled dry under 50. Sweet vermouth is usually red, so it makes a sweeter, darker, different drink.
Pale like dry vermouth but a sweet style, with far more sugar: color says nothing about sweetness.
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.
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