DISCOVEr

HISTORY • PRODUCTION • BOTANICALS •. TEAM

Aperitif/Aperitivo/Apero (noun) - an alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite, derived from the Latin verb aperire, meaning to open.

HISTORy

MEDICINE • POTIONS • ELIXIRS • MONKS

The origin of aperitifs, digestifs and liqueurs is, as with most alcohols, rooted in the medicinal arts practiced by monks and scholars of days gone by. They produced elixirs and potions to aid digestion or stir up your appetite, and, by fortifying herbs and botanicals in sprits and wines, they could preserve them for long periods of time – fridges hadn’t arrived by this point.

Eventually, as you would expect, people began to self-medicate. Soon everyone across continental Europe was enjoying a nip of vermouth before lunch or a bracing amaro after dinner. A drinking culture was born!

PRODUCTION

INFUSE • REST • SWEETEN • BLEND • REST • BOTTLE

Our process: after developing a recipe from our library of over one hundred dried and fresh botanicals, we produce many iterations of the same recipe until we’re finally happy with the flavour and aroma. We then make it in small batches of four hundred bottles. The vermouths have a six step process, much of this is simply waiting for the flavours to impart and the liquid to become one. To extract the most flavour from the botanicals they spend an extended period in organic grain spirit, this pulls out all the flavour in the same way perfume holds an intensity for years. This liquid gets married with wine and later sugar, then rests in stainless tanks until ready for bottling.

BOTANICALS

HERBS • BARKS • ROOTS • SPICES • FRUITS • PEELS

Our vermouths have between twelve & twenty different botanicals, the recipes were developed over eighteen months from our large dried botanical library. Lyon has huge citrus in both grapefruit & lemon with top notes of elderflower & a backbone of fennel. Reus uses a more culinary herb selection to work with the Fino sherry we use as part of the base, the prominent botanicals are violet, sage & rosemary, while our sweet vermouth Turin uses three types of orange, cassia bark & gentian root amongst many others. Of course all of our vermouths use Artemisia Absinthium, or what is commonly know as Grand Wormwood, which provides the bitterness that vermouths are know for.