The Hands-Down Best Way To Store Vermouth For Long Lasting Freshness

Fans of making classic cocktails at home that include vermouth, whether it's a Manhattan or a martini, often miss a crucial step that may keep them from crafting the best possible version of these drinks. You can nail the perfect ratio, the best ingredients, and the right amount of mixing and still find the drink is a touch lackluster. That may be due to oxidized vermouth. If you're unfamiliar with this problem, we need to first dig into vermouth itself. It's a fortified wine as opposed to a liqueur, and like its unfortified counterpart, vermouth can begin to change for the worse once it's been exposed to air. It can lose its vibrancy and potentially develop bitter or musty flavors. A simple solution is to keep open vermouth in the refrigerator to help slow down those changes.

This is especially important if you like to drink vermouth on its own or are making a cocktail that showcases this wine, like a reverse Manhattan, which switches the ratios of rye or bourbon to vermouth, or a 50-50 martini that ups the amount of dry vermouth in the drink. But there's more to know about how to store vermouth even before you pop open the bottle.

If you haven't opened your bottle of vermouth, it still requires a bit of forethought on your part to maintain its flavor. It can be stored in a cool, dark place for up to two years. If the vermouth has a cork, it needs to be stored like other wines on its side so the cork remains moist to prevent oxygen from getting in the bottle. Once opened, vermouth will last longer than regular wine, but the oxidation process still begins, and it becomes a race against time. Typically, dry vermouth is even more prone to oxidation than sweet vermouth because of its lower sugar content. Still, with refrigeration, you should have between one and three months to drink it without noticeable flavor loss.

If you're not a huge vermouth consumer and want to gain as much time as possible, there are a few other tips for preserving this fortified wine. You can use a wine saver, which removes the air from the bottle, to help slow oxidation. Another method is decanting it into a smaller container once you've begun consuming the vermouth. A smaller bottle has  less headspace than a larger one, which means less oxygen is in contact with the liquid, helping to prevent oxidation. Once in the smaller bottles, you could freeze them for even longer storage. Your perfect cocktail shouldn't go down in flames due to oxidized vermouth.