Why Londoners are turning to vermouth

Right, put down the wine list. Cancel your pre-dinner G&T.

This year you need to be drinking vermouth, before and preferably during every meal, because the hottest, hardest to wedge your foot in the door, no-table-before-June restaurants in London are sloshing the super aromatic fortified wine like water.

Take Sabor, from Barrafina’s Nieves Barragán and José Etura — probably the most anticipated Spanish joint ever to open, where the vermouth selection is vast. ‘In Spain it’s a tradition to go and have a vermut before lunch,’ says Etura. ‘When I was a child, all the adults in my family used to gather together with my friends’ parents after church and have el vermut in a local bar. It is a tradition that I would love to bring to Sabor: friends, food and vermut.’ Waiting downstairs for a table, it’s basically mandatory to have a vermouth from the tap, from Riojan producer Martínez Lacuesta. ‘I always like it served the same: simply, with a lot of ice, slice of orange or lemon and a single olive,’ says Etura. It’s all too easy to sip straight, with a plate of salty, slick jamon to hand.

Vermouth also takes centre stage at 2018’s other perma-booked cult restaurant Sorella, Robin Gill’s new Amalfi Coast-inspired Clapham spot. ‘We make it in a traditional way over two weeks, infusing wine with selected botanicals, herbs and sugar and letting time do its thing. The result is a preserved fortified wine with a nice balance of bittersweet flavours’, explains co-founder Dan Joines, for whom vermouth is the ‘quintessential aperitivo’. It’s also the focus of Temper Covent Garden, the third in Neil Rankin’s empire due to open this spring, where pizza comes served with botanical-rich vermouth, perfect for cutting through the cheese and salt. And in Nunhead (the new Peckham, obvs) siblings Ollie and Greta Inglis are opening El Vermut, inspired by Madrid’s enviable la hora del vermut.