review

MARTINI & ROSSI Extra Dry Vermouth

My Fellow Inebriates,

I promised you the skinny on vermouth, and now that my head’s clear I can tackle it.

Vermouth is one of those sometimes mystifying products that figures in a truckload of high-falutin’ drinks without necessarily being any great shakes on its own. Or at least that’s what my drinking buddy Blackie Bear tells me.

Blackie says there’s no big mystery—it comes in dry or sweet varieties, and a good drink-mixing recipe book will tell you which one you need.

Try this mix for instance:

  • 2 oz dry vermouth
  • ½ oz white curacao
  • 2 oz club soda (if you insist on dilution)

Serve over ice with a twist.

I don’t know what would happen if you used sweet vermouth in this, but Blackie says he’d probably end up handing it over to me to finish off, which would be fine because I would.

My local booze store, like yours probably, carries only a handful of vermouths, and Martini & Rossi is the only one I’ve tried, although I plan to have a party tasting at my house the next time my parents go away. They scoffed when I originally said “vertical tasting,” as vermouth is non-vintage, standardized stuff that doesn’t change from year to year or batch to batch. What can I say? My alcoholic journey is only just beginning.

Vermouth is classified as a fortified wine, running at about 18% alcohol typically, as in the case of Martini & Rossi Extra Dry. At $12 for a one-litre bottle, it’s a steal, and drinking it all in one go won’t trash your pocketbook—just you.

Regardless of where they’re made, dry and sweet vermouths are referred to by heavy vermouth users as “French” and “Italian” respectively. This is because people who are really messed up on vermouth are often humping someone and need a separate vocabulary that doesn’t include words like “sweet” and “dry” that they might be employing otherwise.

And then there are “wet” versus “dry” martinis. The more vermouth a martini has, the wetter it is. Predictably, I favor a dry martini as I like to keep my alcohol levels pretty jacked. Blackie Bear says this is one of the things that makes me similar to Winston Churchill.

You do need to keep your vermouth in the fridge if you’re not planning to pound it all at once, as it will oxidize within three months or so. My mother kept her bottle of Martini & Rossi in the cooking cupboard for over two years, tightly capped to thwart my thumbless efforts. Picture me mocking her saying, “It was just fine for making lemon-caper chicken.”

 

I RECOMMEND trying all the vermouths your liquor store stocks, starting with this awesome product.

APPLETON ESTATE V/X Jamaica Rum

My Fellow Inebriates,

In our liquor cabinet is a tiny bottle of APPLETON ESTATE Jamaica rum, purchased to make…a tiramisu.

This would offend me to my core had the tiramisu not been intended for my 2010 birthday. Yes, my parents do remember the date, assisted by kids so frantic for sugar that they would happily celebrate an animal’s birthday a day if they could in order to have cake.


The quarter-cup of rum my mum so generously included in last year’s celebratory dessert did, in fact, cook off, leaving a pleasant rum flavor but little of the hooch that yours truly craves so desperately. Yeah, yeah, it was nice, and everybody sang and scared the shit out of me with flaming candles, toward which my constant delirium tremens threatened to launch me, and all the rest of it.

Perhaps my malaise was evident last year, because this year my mum just gave me a shot glass of rum.

Not a standard pour, mind you, but what she deemed appropriate for a smallish bear. But, ahhh, it was delightful.

For quality my thimbleful of rum, despite being APPLETON ESTATE’S entry-level product, did not disappoint. Gloriously honey-gold and leggy (not that I could really test this part to my satisfaction, with my inadequate glassware), it wafted scents of banana, orange layered with molasses, and an ever-so-slight vanilla whiff at the finish. A touch oily in the mouth, APPLETON ESTATE V/X is a busy rum nested with flavors and imparting just enough burn.

I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED THIS BEVERAGE FROM A LARGE SNIFTER, NOT A TEENY SHOT GLASS!

In fact, I would not mix this rum with anything, NOR WOULD I COOK WITH IT! It is heavenly as is. That said, it would make a swell rum-and-coke if you must. And if you wanted to visit me in jail one day (not there yet, just anticipating it could happen one day), you could bring me rumballs. But no other balls please!

Highly RECOMMEND!

SILENT SAM Vodka

My Fellow Inebriates,

One of my parents tells me that when she and her friends convened around the liquor store before prom with money in hand for a runner, all agreed said runner should just buy “something clear.” SILENT SAM was duly placed in their underage hands, and the rest is a historic blackout.

Of course it’s a myth that SILENT SAM has no taste. Water has a taste, air has a taste, and so does alcohol. But SILENT SAM is renowned for its ability to disappear into mixers. It’s filtered through silk to remove any impurities that might lend it extra, unwanted flavor.

And like most entry-level vodkas these days, SILENT SAM is distilled from grain, not potatoes, which would contribute a fuller taste.

First the silk. This makes vegans hopping mad: all those little wormies being exploited just to make a screwdriver taste more like Tang and less like vodka.

I say those little guys are lucky; they should see what tequila producers do with worms.

Now the potatoes. Very few vodkas are made with actual potatoes these days, nor is a potato base essential to the definition of vodka (“water” in Polish). However, potato vodkas are more expensive to produce and tend to be more high-end.

Just this morning my good friend Boo suggested I try BISON GRASS vodka.

I woke my dad up this morning and told him to go and get me some BISON GRASS. Although he decided to be a jerk and go to work instead, I have high hopes that I can rope him into a grain-versus-potato experiment. According to another, much more eloquent reviewer than yours truly, it’s delightful: http://goodspiritsnews.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/gsn-review-baks-bison-grass-vodka/?blogsub=confirmed#blog_subscription-3

My dad’s priorities need reordering (what is with my parents and the stigma they think attaches to morning drinking?) but until he decides to help me by stocking our liquor cabinet, all I can do is humbly thank the booze-review pioneers who’ve already discovered all the good stuff out there. And for you Boo, I say: you’re one lucky bear to have a human who understands you. But will she boot for you at grad?