Aperitif

The name comes from the Latin for opening, and the drinks in this group are built around bitter botanicals: gentian root, wormwood, cinchona bark, citrus peel and quinine. Bitterness reads as refreshing when a drink is cold and diluted, and it turns harsh when it is neither. That single fact explains the shape of the whole category. Almost every traditional aperitif serve involves ice, soda water or sparkling wine rather than a neat pour, and the few taken neat come in small measures.

Vermouth is aromatised wine: a wine base, a little added spirit, sugar in the sweeter styles, and a botanical mix that under European rules has to include wormwood, which is where the name comes from. Because the base is wine, it sits far below spirit strength, and it oxidises once opened in exactly the way an open bottle of wine does. The sweet red style is associated with Turin and the pale dry style with France, where Marseillan and Chambery are the names to know. Caperitif, made in the Swartland on a Chenin Blanc base with Cape botanicals, is the local example, which is a natural enough fit.

Both are built on a bitter aperitif, and both work because dilution keeps the bitterness in proportion. A spritz stretches that bitter component with sparkling wine and soda across a full glass of ice. A negroni sets the same bitterness against gin and sweet vermouth in a small glass and takes its dilution from stirring. Start with the spritz if bitter drinks are new to you.

Treat it as wine, not as a spirit. Recork it, keep it in the fridge and use it within about a month, because the fresh grapey lift goes first and the herbs turn dusty and flat.

Sugar and colour, mostly. Dry vermouth is pale, low in sugar and sharply herbal, and it is the one a martini asks for. Sweet vermouth is darker and richer, often carrying caramel and warm spice, and it is what a negroni or a manhattan needs. Bianco is sweet but pale, which catches people out, so it will not stand in for the red. Treat the three as separate ingredients rather than as points on a scale.

Fill a large wine glass with ice first, because a warm glass is what ruins it. Then three parts sparkling wine, two parts of the bitter aperitif and one part soda water, poured in that order so the bubbles hold.