Macchia Dry Marino Mediterraneo Vermouth 750ml

Macchia was founded in 2014 by Emilio Rocchino, a bartender who arrived in Sardinia from Salerno in 2006 and cut his teeth serving the Costa Smeralda before working in Milan and returning to the island to develop his own recipes. Emilio traces vermouth back to eighteenth-century Turin, when Piedmont fell under the Kingdom of Sardinia, and he honors that shared history by blending wines from both regions. He went on to open a bar and spirits shop in Olbia.

The Dry Marino draws on the purposefully oxidized style of old-school French vermouth. Its base wine is thirty percent Vernaccia di Oristano, aged five years in a solera system under flor that lends sherry-like, savory depth, blended with non-aromatic Cortese from Piedmont. Sardinian botanicals, including wormwood, gentian root, helichrysum, pompia citrus, licorice, and sea bean, are individually infused in grain alcohol, then sweetened with a comparatively light 150 grams of cane sugar per liter.

In the glass it pours a pale straw yellow with amber glints, its aroma built on helichrysum and pompia citrus. The palate is dry and briny, with nutty, oxidative notes from the vernaccia rounded out by apple, orange peel, and a resinous finish. Try it well chilled alongside olives, cured anchovies, or a simple plate of oysters, or shake it into a dry martini.