If you haven’t tried Carpano Anti­ca yet, please do so. And if you haven’t tried it on its own you have to. Yes, I just told you to sip on a glass of ver­mouth. Trust me. There’s noth­ing quite like it. You can def­i­nite­ly drink this over ice (larg­er cubes) like an aperitif.

This Ital­ian sweet ver­mouth was cre­at­ed by Anto­nio Benedet­to Carpano. Anto­nio is report­ed to be the god­fa­ther of ver­mouth and Carpano Anti­ca is the orig­i­nal recipe that dates back to 1786. Even The label is an endur­ing repli­ca of the 1786 orig­i­nal. Anto­nio gave birth to the title ver­mouth, named after the Ger­man wine using worm­wood (Wer­mut). Ver­mouth was ini­tial­ly cre­at­ed to fla­vor wines of poor qual­i­ty, which lead to its reput­ed med­i­c­i­nal val­ues of cur­ing diges­tive ail­ments. This sweet ver­mouth is an aro­m­a­tized Ital­ian style wine prod­uct. The orig­i­nal recipe was cre­at­ed from white wine with the infu­sion of over 30 vari­eties of herbs and spices. With that said let’s get to my tast­ing notes. Good luck, right?

You’ll notice upon pour­ing your first glass the col­or­ing is of caramelized sug­ar, a brown­ish orange. It’s rather thick. If you swirl it around your glass it’ll leave long legs. The nose bursts with vanil­la, clove, figs, orange peel and pos­si­bly a touch of tof­fee. It’s a very com­plex whiff, as there are oth­er inde­scrib­ables. The sip test reveals orange peel and dried fruit right up front. The mid-palette is bit­ter, prob­a­bly from the worm­wood and orange peel (almost like a ton­ic). Final­ly, it leaves you with a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly clean fin­ish of tof­fee, vanil­la and caramel. It’s a very intense and well round­ed expe­ri­ence and one that every­one should expe­ri­ence for themselves.

This is the best ver­mouth one can buy. You’re def­i­nite­ly going to want to vac­u­um seal and refrig­er­ate your bot­tle. I know I just told you this is a sweet ver­mouth, but be care­ful sub­sti­tut­ing this in recipes that call for sweet ver­mouth. It’s not that sweet. It’s bit­ter. I’d use this in a Man­hat­tan, Bob­by Burns or a Vieux Car­ré. All this talk has me crav­ing a cock­tail with Carpano Anti­ca. I think I’ll make myself a Man­hat­tan right now. Drink like kings, my friends. Pinky out.

Bot­tles around $30.