Punt e Mes Vermouth 750ml

Punt e Mes traces back to the Carpano house, founded in Turin in 1786 by Antonio Benedetto Carpano, the man credited with creating the first commercial vermouth. The Punt e Mes style emerged later, around 1870, when a stockbroker at Carpano's bar in Piazza Castello reportedly ordered his vermouth with an extra "point and a half" of bitterness, using the trading-floor slang of the day, and the name and recipe stuck. The Carpano company changed hands over the following century, eventually passing to Milan-based Fratelli Branca Distillerie in 2001, which still produces it today.

Punt e Mes is built on a base of white wine, infused with what the house calls its "formula of the quindici," a proprietary blend of around fifteen botanicals that includes wormwood and a notably high dose of quinine. That quinine content pushes the finished vermouth past standard sweet styles and into the vermouth amaro category, giving it a sweetness-to-bitterness ratio unlike its Carpano sibling, Antica Formula. Caramelized sugar deepens the color to a rich amber-brown.

The nose offers dark stewed fruit, dried thyme, cinnamon, and tobacco leaf. On the palate, an initial wave of honeyed plum and orange gives way to a firm, tannic bitterness built from quinine and orange pith, with licorice root and lingering baking spice carrying through the long finish.