Sweet

Sweet vermouth — the Italian rosso style — is an aromatized, fortified wine built on a mostly white base wine, fortified with grape spirit, sweetened, and infused with wormwood (Artemisia) and a proprietary tangle of herbs, roots, barks, flowers and spices. Deep reddish-brown from added caramel rather than from red grapes, it is the darker, sweeter twin of pale dry (French) vermouth, and its spiritual home is Turin in Piedmont. At roughly 15 to 18 percent alcohol it smells and tastes of caramel and dark bittersweet herbs, orange peel, clove, cinnamon, vanilla and a lingering bitter-wormwood edge over gentle sweetness. Drunk chilled on ice with an orange twist as an aperitivo, it is best known as the indispensable red heart of the Negroni, the Manhattan and the Americano.