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Aromatic, tasty and cool

A new generation is rediscovering the pleasures of vermouth as the ritual of the aperitif has become fashionable

For the past 150 years, ver­mouth has been so firmly es­tab­lished in Cat­alo­nia that even the word for the aro­matic wine –ver­mut– has come to re­place the word ‘aper­i­tif' to refer to the rit­ual of a drink be­fore sit­ting down to a meal. How­ever, nei­ther the for­ti­fied drink made with herbs and spices nor the so­cial and gas­tro­nomic rit­ual were al­ways so pop­u­lar. There have been pe­ri­ods when vi ranci, mo­ji­tos, caipir­inha or other cock­tails ruled the day. Yet, the sit­u­a­tion has changed over the past few years and we are cur­rently liv­ing through a golden age for the aper­i­tif. The ques­tion is, why has ‘el ver­mut' be­come so cool?

As with any so­cial trend, there is more than one rea­son. In the first place, the sud­den ar­rival of the eco­nomic cri­sis forced many peo­ple to re­duce the amount of money they are will­ing to spend on eat­ing and drink­ing out. Re­lax­ing with friends with a few snacks and a re­fresh­ing drink is some­thing that harks back to the past. Who does not re­call as a child en­joy­ing olives and cock­les with the fam­ily at Sun­day lunchtime while wait­ing for the paella to be served? Nor is it un­known for the past to im­pose its mem­o­ries at times of gen­eral anx­i­ety, as the mind sum­mons thoughts of com­fort and safety? ‘El ver­mut' is part of Cata­lan tra­di­tion and at the same time al­ways af­ford­able.

Nev­er­the­less, today's aper­i­tif has be­come a part of mod­ern urban liv­ing, and it ap­pears to be a cus­tom that has emerged spon­ta­neously, with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of big-name brand pro­mo­tions. Peo­ple have re­dis­cov­ered ‘el ver­mut' and it has been taken up by young peo­ple as part of a phe­nom­e­non that the book, Teo­ria i pràctica del ver­mut (Ara lli­bres), calls “the ver­mut gen­er­a­tion”.

Ver­mouth gen­er­a­tion

These are the chil­dren of the 1970s baby­boomers, who are now be­tween 35 and 40, who have left be­hind dis­cos and club­bing since their chil­dren came along: “The ver­mut gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for other places to meet and mix, and the aper­i­tif al­lows them to spend time with their friends with­out the need for babysit­ters and with­out spend­ing too much be­cause this is not a time for large ex­pen­di­ture,” says one of the book's au­thors, Josep Su­car­rats.

The phe­nom­e­non also has a ge­o­graph­i­cal as­pect, in the sense that cer­tain areas have be­come as­so­ci­ated with the cus­tom. This is the case of Barcelona's Sant An­toni neigh­bour­hood, be­tween Eix­am­ple and Raval, which every Sun­day has a sec­ond­hand book mar­ket that makes the area ideal for an aper­i­tif. In re­cent years, the ar­rival of artists, young peo­ple and for­eign res­i­dents in the area, has given the neigh­bour­hood new life, among which are plenty of bars of­fer­ing ‘el ver­mut'. The aper­i­tif is some­thing that ap­peals as much to hip­sters as it does to fam­i­lies, while the trend has grown thanks to rec­om­men­da­tions and im­ages shared on so­cial media. In­sta­gram alone has more than 40,000 im­ages filed under the hash­tag #ver­mut.

An­other as­pect is that own­ing or run­ning a bar serv­ing aper­i­tifs is much more eco­nom­i­cally vi­able today, es­pe­cially for younger peo­ple. With­out the ex­penses as­so­ci­ated with a full-blown restau­rant busi­ness, young en­tre­pre­neurs have been open­ing, or tak­ing over, ‘ver­mut' bars, spread­ing the phe­nom­e­non fur­ther.

There are two good ex­am­ples of this trend. The mor­rofi.word­press.com blog, cre­ated in 2007 by friends Guillermo Pfaff, Marc Monzó and Mar­cel Fernández, has rec­om­men­da­tions of Barcelona bars and restau­rants. In 2010, Mar­cel de­cided to open a small ver­mu­te­ria, Morro Fi, with some friends, turn­ing it into a “mag­i­cal” meet­ing point. Since then, three more have opened and the busi­ness now has its own line of prod­ucts, in­clud­ing its own ver­mouth.

The other ex­am­ple is Miquel Ángel Va­quer (one of the co-au­thors of Teo­ria i pràctica del ver­mut), who was a lead­ing fig­ure in re­sus­ci­tat­ing the aper­i­tif and giv­ing it a mod­ern ap­peal. Son of a wine­grow­ing fam­ily in Terra Alta, Va­quer helped re­vi­talise the aro­matic bev­er­age by repack­ag­ing it. If Barcelona is the city of de­sign, ‘el ver­mut' was a prime can­di­date for a makeover and Va­quer took his in­spi­ra­tion from the idea of Ab­so­lut Vodka, which in the 1980s used bot­tles by lead­ing de­sign­ers. Va­quer helped make ver­mouth no­tice­able and a re­port in the Fi­nan­cial Times cites Casa Mar­iol, the wine bar be­long­ing to the Va­quer fam­ily in Sagrada Família, which the young busi­ness­man turned into a fash­ion­able aper­i­tif bar.

Miquel Àngel be­lieves that this “tasty, re­fresh­ing and low in al­co­hol” bev­er­age is very Cata­lan in char­ac­ter: a lit­tle aus­tere, laid back, good in so­cial sit­u­a­tions. Cata­lans like eat­ing to­gether at home with friends and fam­ily and in­creas­ingly ver­mu­ter­ies are of­fer­ing food, mak­ing the rit­ual take longer and even re­plac­ing lunch: “Today, the way we eat has changed and often a long aper­i­tif is as good as lunch, which in the past would have been un­think­able,” says Su­car­rats.

Ac­com­pa­ni­ments

‘El ver­mut' is back, and with it a host of com­ple­men­tary ac­tiv­i­ties are spring­ing up, such as mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment and even aper­i­tifs of­fered in gyms after zumba classes. An­other proof of the suc­cess of ‘el ver­mut' is Al­bert Adrià, brother of fa­mous chef Fer­ran, who opened the bar, Bodega 1900.

Al­bert Adrià's in­cur­sion into the world of aper­i­tifs is also sur­rounded by nos­tal­gia, when as a child every Sun­day the bot­tle of Mar­tini would make an ap­pear­ance for the fam­ily aper­i­tif.

The Ital­ian brand, per­haps the best known ver­mouth on a global scale, has al­ways been as­so­ci­ated with glam­orous pub­lic­ity cam­paigns en­cour­ag­ing con­sump­tion of a sec­ond-choice bev­er­age by link­ing it with cock­tails, Hol­ly­wood or fes­tiv­i­ties. Mar­tini is still the best-sell­ing brand of ver­mouth in the do­mes­tic mar­ket and re­cently joined up with Barcelona's Gremi de Restau­ració to cel­e­brate 10 days of ver­mouth that in­cluded 50 bars (La Mon­roe, Mer­cat Princesa, El Canalla, and so on) of­fer­ing an aper­i­tif that in­cluded a tapa snack for 3.50 euros, with live music se­lected by Pep Sala: Inma Ortiz, Smok­ing Tones, Quim Vila...

The com­pany has also re­cently brought out a new va­ri­ety, Mar­tini Ris­erva Spe­ciale, made with tra­di­tional meth­ods from the Pied­mont re­gion that in­cludes the use of local wines and herbs. Yet, there are no short­age of do­mes­tic brands on the mar­ket today, in­clud­ing Mon­tana Pe­ruc­chi, Yza­guirre, Iris, Miró, Dos Déus and Es­pinaler, among oth­ers.

Reus is the cra­dle of Iber­ian ver­mouth, and the city boasts some 50 dif­fer­ent brands. There is also the Vinari prize awarded to the best prod­uct and the open­ing of the Museu del Ver­mut. While Cata­lans did not in­vent ver­mouth, it is a drink that fits per­fectly with our pref­er­ence for sit­ting out­side in good com­pany with a few olives and some­thing tasty to sip.


Al­bert Adrià will never for­get the Sun­day aper­i­tifs of his child­hood with brother Fer­ran and their par­ents. It in­stilled in him a fond­ness for a rit­ual he says “is part of our cul­ture”. So much so, that two years ago he opened the bar, Bodega 1900, serv­ing aper­i­tifs, but also of­fer­ing other eat­ing op­tions: “An ad­van­tage of these es­tab­lish­ments is that you can spend more or less, de­pend­ing on what you order,” says Al­bert.

The ver­mouth Adrià serves is made es­pe­cially for Bodega 1900 by Mar­tini, and he es­ti­mates that he sells about 20 bot­tles a day. Al­bert's ca­reer is closely linked to his brother's El Bulli restau­rant, where he was in charge of com­ing up with fab­u­lous desserts (he was recog­nised by Restau­rant mag­a­zine as the world's best pas­try chef this year). How­ever, his busi­ness side has been di­rected at his tapas bar, Tick­ets, with its unique mix of tra­di­tion and moder­nity, and now Bodega 1900, which has be­come some­thing of a refuge for the younger Adrià brother.

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