Salty, Sweet, Bitter and More, Vermouth Is a Taste of Madrid in a Glass

I moved to Spain about a year ago and at one of my first meals in Madrid, I saw a handsome young couple drinking some kind of unidentifiable light brown cocktail on ice with a wedge of orange and green olives. It was before noon and I was stumped. I had to know what it was. Vermouth, they told me.

Before I moved to Spain, I knew of two types of vermouth: white and red. So I had to try it — and it was delicious. Lighter, more subtle, more medicinal than anything I’d had in America.

And it’s a lot more than a drink. Vermouth is to Spain what a pint is to Ireland or mate is to Argentina — a national pastime. It’s a lifestyle, as much an activity as it is a beverage. There are establishments called vermuterias here. Historically, people drink vermouth on Sunday mornings after church. In fact, it’s so stitched into the culture that “fer un vermut” (“to do a vermouth”) is an expression that doesn’t even require you to order vermouth. It means, let’s meet for a drink in the middle of the day (another culinary surprise).

If you ask enough Spaniards about vermouth, soon enough you will wind up in Reus, a Catalan city just south of Barcelona with a thousand-year history, and the drink’s unofficial capital.

“Reus was the second industrialized city in Catalonia,” said Joan Tàpias Cors, the founder and owner of Museu del Vermut, in the old town in Reus. (The first was Barcelona.) “In the 1850s a blight of bacteria killed almost all the grapevines. So winemakers here decided to start making vermouth — it made the grapes go farther.”

Mr. Tàpias Cors told me that the museum (which is also a restaurant) has more than 6,500 items related to vermouth, representing 57 countries. “We have vermouths from the United States made during Prohibition that are called ‘nonintoxicating,’ which is of course impossible,” he said.

A few weeks later, I attended the Excellence Vermouth Awards, an annual conference of vermouth makers held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Madrid, with my friend Ciela Crespo, owner of Vino con Tino, a service that selects and ships wine for clients, hoping to learn more.

“Welcome to the showroom of vermouth,” said Javier Fernández Piera, the organizer of the conference. All around us were men and woman who owned restaurants or bottled spirits or just loved vermouth. The men wore suits, the women wore

scarves, and everyone looked like they’d be equally comfortable at a political fund-raiser.

“The history of…