Cocchi Americano

Cocchi Americano is an Italian aromatized, fortified wine of the quinquina (or americano) family — a Piedmontese aperitivo built on a Moscato d'Asti base wine, fortified with grape spirit and flavoured with cinchona bark, gentian and citrus. Pale straw-gold rather than the ruby of a red vermouth, it is bittersweet and unmistakably orange-scented, with the dry, quinine bitterness of cinchona lifting a honeyed Moscato core. At around 16.5 percent alcohol it drinks as a light, chilled aperitivo — over ice with an orange or lemon twist, or lengthened with soda — and it has become famous as the closest modern stand-in for the discontinued Kina Lillet once called for in the original Vesper Martini. Made by the Turin house of Giulio Cocchi, it smells of orange peel, honey and dried herbs and finishes clean, dry and bitter.