Steve Kämmerer didn't know he'd be starting a movement when he put the House Vermouth on his menu at Bar Americano. At his aperitivo-style bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Kämmerer pulls a serving of Spanish vermouth on tap before piping a thick spiral of sweet, orange foam on top. He always wanted to serve vermouth on tap to imitate European drinking culture when developing Bar Americano, but he was less certain about how to dress it up.
You'll first notice a change in flavor. Vermouth - a mixture of fruity wine and botanicals - will rise to the top of your palate revealing itself to be complex, spicy, and with a slightly bitter tang. Typically, these flavors are buried under a mountain of gin, so a reverse martini's actually a pretty good way to get to know vermouth.
At Madeira Park in Atlanta, bar manager Philip Weltner's list of cocktails is built on the classics: a Negroni, a Manhattan, a Tuxedo. The through line is that almost every drink on the menu showcases fortified wine. Among this group is a lesser-known cocktail from the late 19th century called the Metropolitan . The earliest known reference to the Metropolitan is from O.H. Byron's Modern Bartenders' Guide , which was published in New York in 1884
Will Thompson isn't terribly impressed with the state of gin these days. When the owner of Sunny's in Miami goes out on the town in search of a Martini, he often faces a bit of a dilemma. "I look at the backbar and there's six gins that I think all taste kinda like shit," he says. He feels there's been a downturn in overall gin quality and proof level.
The upside-down martini, Child's iconic favorite cocktail, is a true inversion of what most people with strong opinions want from the drink. Martini fans will quibble over just how dry the cocktail should be, some argue that a 5:1 ratio of liquor to vermouth is the best, others claim 10:1 is ideal. The upside-down martini simply says, "let's make this refreshing," and goes with a 5:1 ratio of vermouth to gin (usually preferred over vodka in this drink).
