Dry vermouth

Vermouth sec

What it is

The name is German — Wermut, wormwood — and the wormwood is not decoration: it is the bitterness that survives a reduction, at the point where white wine has gone flat and sour. At Marseillan the base wines spend a year outdoors in oak, through sun, lagoon mist and frost, before a single botanical is infused into them.

In the kitchen

Swap it for white wine in a fish sauce volume for volume, but stop the reduction earlier — the bitterness concentrates faster than the acidity does. An open bottle is a wine, not a spirit: refrigerate it and finish it inside a month.

Goes with

Dover sole Shallot Cream Butter Mussel Fennel

Same species

Absinthe Génépi Mugwort Sweet red vermouth Tarragon Wormwood

Also used with

Scallop coral Castelvetrano olive Picholine olive

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