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Blanc Vermouth, a Third Party for Cocktail Lovers
For a very long time in America, choosing a vermouth was simple. Like political parties, there were really just two: the sweet red ones, which originated in Italy, and the dry white ones associated with France. You used the sweet in manhattans, the dry in martinis. Done.
In the last decade, however, the vermouth market, like that of nearly every other spirit category, has exploded with options. This has meant many more sweet and dry vermouth brands to choose from. But it has also meant a sudden surge for a dark-horse genre previously known mainly to Europeans.
This is blanc vermouth, or bianco, as the Italians call it. It’s dry like white, but sweet like red. And yet it’s really nothing like either.
“It’s my favorite thing,” said Ivy Mix, an owner of Leyenda, on Smith Street in Brooklyn. As at many cocktail bars these days, blanc vermouth can be found in a couple of drinks on the menu. “The nice thing about blanc vermouth is you get the best of both worlds: a dry and a sweet in one.”
Blanc vermouth is not new. The style was invented in the late 19th century in Chambéry, in southeastern France, though there are competing claims as to which producer made it first. The Italian biancos came later. Some people think the French and Italian versions are different enough to constitute two styles.
“Biancos tend to be very vanilla forward,” François Monti, a Belgian spirits expert based in Madrid and the author of “The Big Book of Vermouth,” wrote in an email.
Blancs, like the Dolin brand, are “more about flowers such as elderflower or fruits,” he added. “The only thing they really have in common is that Dolin and the biancos have little bittering agents and are not filled with cloves, cinnamon and other strong spices common with reds.” (While this is true, biancos and blanc are more like each other than they are like other vermouths.)
The style is widely popular in Europe. In fact, the mammoth vermouth producer Martini’s most popular product is its bianco. “Bianco drinkers are a bit like people who buy Christmas hit singles,” Mr. Monti said. “You don’t know who they are, but they’re everywhere.”
As American bartenders have done throughout history with other European spirits, they have taken blanc vermouth and used it in ways that Europeans don’t — primarily in cocktails.
At Fresh Kills, a new cocktail bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Richard Boccato, the bartender and an owner, uses a full two ounces of blanc vermouth in the Roofgarden, an old cocktail that originally called for dry vermouth.
Yana Volfson, the beverage director at the Manhattan restaurant Cosme, uses Dolin blanc in her mezcal drink Striptease, and deploys Carpano Bianco, which is made in Italy, in the tequila drink Benny Blanco. “With agave spirits, I find it to be softening,” Ms. Volfson said.
(Mr. Monti agreed. Blanc vermouth “works very well with spirits such as tequila or pisco, which have no strong association with other types of vermouths,” he said. “It helps take vermouth out of the whole boozy cocktails with aged, brown spirits or gin thing.”)
Sother Teague, the beverage director at Amor y Amargo in the East Village, said his use of blanc vermouth blooms as the weather warms.
“I definitely reach for it more for off-menu cocktails, now that it’s spring,” he said. “It’s lighter, it’s brighter. It’s kind of a middle place.”
Recipe: Striptease
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