If your only experience of vermouth is the dusty bottle in your parents' liquor cabinet that gets a splash into a martini once a year, you are missing an entire category of wine. Real vermouth is one of the best drinks you can pour, and Canada makes some genuinely great ones. Here's what vermouth actually is, how to drink it, and why the best Canadian vermouth doesn't live at the LCBO.
★ The Traynor Vermouth Pair ★
Direct-to-consumer only — not at the LCBO. Tap a bottle to shop.
What is vermouth, actually?
Vermouth is aromatized fortified wine.
Break that down:
- Aromatized — steeped with botanicals (herbs, roots, barks, spices, flowers).
- Fortified — spirit added to raise the ABV to somewhere between 15% and 22%.
- Wine — the base is real wine. That's the important part. Vermouth is not a spirit. It's a wine you've dressed up.
The name comes from the German Wermut, meaning wormwood — the bitter, silvery herb that's the traditional backbone of vermouth's flavour. Wormwood is what gives vermouth its slightly bitter edge and its distinctive "medicinal" hint. It's also the same herb that gave absinthe its (undeserved) reputation for making you hallucinate.
The two main styles
Light in colour, dry, herbal-forward. Built for martinis and highballs. 15–18% ABV, typically 4–6% residual sugar. This is our Haberdasher.
Deeper amber to red, sweeter, richer. Built for Negronis, Manhattans, and sipping over one big rock. 15–18% ABV, typically 14–18% residual sugar. This is our Madonna.
Then there are subcategories: blanco vermouth (sweet but pale), extra dry, and increasingly, natural/craft vermouths that don't fit any traditional style. That last category is where Canadian producers have been making noise.
What goes into vermouth — the botanicals
The wine base is only half the story. The other half is the infusion of botanicals — dozens of herbs, roots, barks, seeds, flowers, and spices macerated into the wine or the fortifying spirit before blending. Each producer has a proprietary blend of 20–40 botanicals.
★ The Botanical Cabinet ★
Some are foraged locally; some are imported. The specific blend is what makes each vermouth taste distinctly like itself. At Traynor, we source many of our botanicals from Prince Edward County — including our own iris florentina, which we grow specifically for its orris root.
How to actually drink vermouth
The number-one thing to understand: vermouth is meant to be drunk, not just used as a splash in a mixed drink.
Europeans do this instinctively. In Italy, "l'ora del vermouth" (vermouth hour) is a pre-dinner ritual — a small glass of chilled vermouth with olives, cheese, or charcuterie, served like an aperitif. In France, dry vermouth on its own over ice with a twist of lemon is standard at bistros.
North Americans have historically treated vermouth like a mixer. That's a waste of good vermouth.
Here's how we drink it at Traynor:
2 oz vermouth over one big rock. Orange peel twist. That's the whole recipe. Do this once with good vermouth and you'll never look at the category the same.
2 oz vermouth, top with soda water, orange twist. Lighter than an Aperol Spritz, more herbal. Made for hot patio afternoons.
2 oz sweet vermouth, tonic water, slice of grapefruit. The lower-ABV alternative to a G&T. Underrated.
2 oz sweet vermouth, 1/2 oz Angostura bitters, orange peel. Skip the sugar — vermouth has plenty. Skip the whiskey for a lower-ABV version.
Negroni (equal parts sweet vermouth + gin + Campari). Manhattan (2:1 rye : sweet vermouth, dash bitters). Martini (5:1 gin : dry vermouth, ish).
What we make
Madonna Vermouth
Amber, rich, herbal-forward. Vidal white wine base, fortified and infused with 22 botanicals from PEC and beyond. Beppi Crosariol Globe & Mail Pick of the Week. Featured in Toronto Life. Solid Negroni vermouth — even better on its own over one big rock.
Shop Madonna →
Haberdasher Vermouth
Lighter, floral, citrus-forward. White wine base, fortified and infused with a lighter botanical blend that leans into orris, chamomile, and citrus. Unfiltered, natural, raw. Perfect martini vermouth — also perfect with soda and a twist.
Shop Haberdasher →Why not just get vermouth at the LCBO?
You can — the LCBO carries the big commercial vermouths: Martini & Rossi, Cinzano, Dolin, Noilly Prat. Those are all fine. They're mass-produced, they're consistent, they're inexpensive.
They're also not what small-producer craft vermouth tastes like.
Craft vermouth is a completely different category. It's aromatic, complex, and vintage-specific in the way a good wine is. The base wines are better. The botanicals are fresher. The whole thing is made with care rather than scale.
We chose to distribute our vermouths direct-to-consumer, not through the LCBO. Two reasons:
LCBO takes a substantial cut of every bottle. Because vermouth doesn't move the volume our wines do, that cut would either force us to raise the price significantly (bad for you) or shrink our margin below sense (bad for us).
Vermouth is a wine — it's alive, and it's meant to be drunk fresh. LCBO distribution means bottles sit in warehouses and on shelves for months. Direct-to-consumer means our vermouth ships from cellar to your kitchen at the peak of its flavour.
Ordering is easy. Visit our shop page, free shipping in Ontario on orders over $200, and we ship across the country. Or come to the cellar door and pick up a bottle in person.
How to store vermouth
★ Rule of thumb
Refrigerate after opening. Vermouth is a wine. It oxidizes.
- Unopened: Store like wine — cool, dark, away from light. Keeps 2–3 years.
- Opened: Fridge, tightly re-corked. 4–6 weeks at peak flavour. After that, still safe to drink but tastes flatter.
If you find an old bottle of vermouth in a dusty liquor cabinet that's been open for a year, its function as a cocktail ingredient is roughly the same as putting rusty water in your drink. Get a fresh bottle.
Frequently asked
Is vermouth a wine or a spirit?
Wine. Specifically, aromatized fortified wine. The alcohol is 15–22% ABV — higher than table wine, lower than most spirits. The base is real wine, not a distilled spirit.
Does vermouth go bad?
Yes. Once opened, refrigerate it. It stays at peak flavour for about 4–6 weeks in the fridge, then slowly loses freshness. It won't make you sick, but old vermouth makes a lousy cocktail.
Sweet vs dry vermouth — which do I need?
Depends on what you're making. Manhattans and Negronis want sweet. Martinis want dry. If you're going to sip it on its own, sweet vermouth tends to be more crowd-pleasing.
Can you drink vermouth straight?
Yes, and you should. That's how vermouth is drunk in Italy and France. Chill it, pour it over ice, add an orange twist. Sip.
Is Traynor vermouth at the LCBO?
No. We chose direct-to-consumer distribution to keep the price accessible and the product fresh. You can order our vermouths online or pick them up at the cellar door in Hillier.
What's the ABV of your vermouth?
16% for both Madonna (sweet) and Haberdasher (dry).
Are your vermouths vegan?
Yes. Like all Traynor wines, both Madonna and Haberdasher are 100% vegan. No animal-derived fining agents.
Are the botanicals organic?
We source many botanicals from Prince Edward County — including our own iris florentina grown for orris root. Some imported botanicals aren't certified organic; we choose growers based on quality and freshness. See our natural wine philosophy.
★ Vermouth, direct from our cellar ★
Not at the LCBO. Madonna and Haberdasher ship direct from Hillier — free shipping in Ontario on orders over $200.
Shop Madonna →Shop Haberdasher →
