Contratto Rosso Vermouth

Herbal complexity, spice, balanced bitterness and sweetness. Built for serious Negronis and Manhattans.

The base is Cortese, a white grape grown and made in Canelli in Piedmont. Into it go extracts of 31 herbs, spices, roots and seeds, eight of them secret. Among the named ones are gentian, cinchona, rhubarb, bitter orange, bergamot and sandalwood. They are crushed in a hammer mill and cold-extracted for about 20 days. Then come the wine, beet sugar and an organic wheat spirit from Cuneo. Caramel gives the colour.

Contratto's vermouth recipes date to the 1890s. By the 1930s the house made 100,000 bottles a year. Production stopped in the 1960s until the revival. It sits at 17 per cent with 180 grams of sugar a litre, so it is sweet but not syrupy.

The house serves it at 6 to 8 degrees in a tulip glass, or chilled with a twist of lemon. Skurnik finds black cherry cola and nutmeg, then gentian, spearmint and wormwood.