Two Bottles, Eight Cocktails: Vermouth and Triple Sec

Almost every classic cocktail is a base spirit plus a modifier. People buy base spirits happily - everybody owns gin, or bourbon, or tequila. The modifiers are where home bars stall, because nobody explains them. There are two that matter. They cost less than the spirits they go with, and between them they unlock most of the list at any decent bar.

Start with the rule that ruins vermouth

Vermouth is wine. Fortified and flavoured with botanicals, but wine. That means an opened bottle oxidises exactly the way an opened bottle of Chardonnay does: it goes flat and sour, and it does it in weeks, not years.

So: vermouth belongs in the refrigerator once it is opened, and you should expect about a month of good drinking from it. The dusty bottle on the top shelf that has been there since a party two summers ago is not vermouth any more. If your Martinis have been disappointing and you blamed the gin, this was almost certainly the reason.

The practical consequence is a buying decision. If you make one Martini a month, buy the inexpensive bottle and replace it often. That is not us talking you down - a fresh $7.69 bottle genuinely beats a six-month-old expensive one, every single time. If you drink Negronis weekly, buy better, because you will actually finish it.

The sweet vermouth drinks

Sweet vermouth - red, or rosso - is the backbone of three drinks you already know:

• Manhattan. Rye or bourbon, sweet vermouth, two dashes of aromatic bitters, roughly 2:1. Stir it, do not shake it.
• Negroni. Equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. The easiest cocktail in the world to remember and one of the hardest to improve upon.
• Boulevardier. A Negroni with bourbon instead of gin. Much better in October than in June.

The dry vermouth drinks

• Martini. Gin and dry vermouth, stirred very cold, lemon twist or olive. The ratio is a matter of taste and long argument; start around 5:1 and adjust from there.
• Americano. Sweet vermouth, Campari, soda water. Low in alcohol, which is the entire reason it exists.

The triple sec drinks

Triple sec is orange liqueur, and it is doing the same job in three of the most-ordered drinks in America:

• Margarita. Tequila, triple sec, lime. Start at 2:1:1 and adjust to your limes.
• Cosmopolitan. Vodka, triple sec, cranberry, lime.
• Sidecar. Cognac, triple sec, lemon.

Here the price ladder is real and you can taste it. DeKuyper at $10.99 is a sweetener that tastes broadly of orange, and in a pitcher of margaritas for a party nobody is going to complain. Cointreau at $41.79 is a proper orange spirit - drier, far more aromatic - and in a carefully built single margarita or a sidecar the difference is not subtle. Buy the first for volume, the second for care.

The shopping list

Base spirits, if you are starting from nothing

Sweet vermouth, a bottle of Angostura and the Bulleit rye comes to under seventy dollars all in, and you can make Manhattans until spring. Put the vermouth in the fridge on the way past.

Choosing the tequila for those margaritas is a question of its own, and we answered it here.

Come get it

Beverage World Package Store, 6731 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Doraville, GA 30360. Call (770) 441-0001. We are open Sundays; current hours are on the location and hours page. Prices and stock in this post were correct the day it was written — the links go to the live product pages, which always win.