Wicked Gil – Gölles Alfred Rosso Wermut

Today it is time for a vermouth review again. I already featured the Semi-Dry Gölles Wermut here on the blog. Now, Alois Gölles and Manfred Tement also created a red version. I was instantly intrigued because I primarily use this style of fortified wine in cocktails. On top of that, I already had a bunch of recipes I wanted to try.

Similar to the Semi-Dry version, the Alfred Rosso is produced as a corporation between the Gölles distillery and the Tement vineyard. Furthermore, the same botanicals, namely wormwood, cardamom, thyme, fennel, coriander seeds, rose petals and orange peel are used. Obviously, red wines comprise the base wines for the Rosso. Apart from that, the fortified wine is moderately sweetened and bottled at 17 % ABV.

Herbal red wine

The Alfred Rosso delivers exactly what you would expect: A beautiful and balanced combination of the familiar Alfred Wermut flavours with quite a lot of red wine notes. For me, the predominant flavour is thyme. Nevertheless, the Rosso manages to be quite complex without hiding the botanicals used. It is already a pleasant sip neat, but also great on ice cubes with an orange twist or with tonic water. In my case, I paired the vermouth with the Goldberg Bone Dry Tonic Water. This resulted in a quite dry, but also very refreshing highball. Of course, you can opt for a sweeter tonic, I would suggest using Le Tribute or even Fever Tree Mediterranean.

 

 

Appel and wood notes

In the case of the Gölles Wermut I almost could not decide which cocktail to mix first. However, apart from the Lufthansa Cocktail, I also came up with a rather unusual flavour combination. Actually, I came up with this cocktail when wondering what to mix with the Lantenhammer stone pine wood liqueur. The inspiration came from the Phillipe the Bold cocktail I found at Schlimmer Durst. However, instead of calvados I used an apple eau de vie distilled by Hiebl and aged in chestnut barrels. I also replaced the Amaro and instead used the combination of both semi-dry Gölles vermouths. On top of that, I kept the cacao bitters, but left out the absinthe.

The drink starts off with some apple notes which are soon overtaken by typical chestnut barrel flavours. For me, these come in the form of buttery notes. The stone pine wood and the chestnut barrel apple eau de vie work very well together with similar flavours. Apart from that, the two vermouths form the backbone of the drink with a certain sweetness and quite some wine notes. In the aftertaste you can detect the slightest hint of chocolate flavours from the bitters. Yes, this is a weird drink which rather suits the name.

Very pleasant, spirit-forward drink

As mentioned above, I also mixed up a Lufthansa Cocktail. After the reconstruction by Mixology there was a small hype amongst my fellow Drinkstagramers. Obviously, I missed it and am just now writing about the cocktail. Nevertheless, I chose Monteru Merlot Brandy, because I did not have a German brandy on hand. Apart from that, I kept it simple with the Giffard Triple Sec and the Marie Brizard Apry liqueurs. For the red vermouth I chose the Gölles Rosso. In the end, the resulting drink was very smooth with just the right amount of sweetness – it definitely is on the sweet side. Even my wife enjoyed this cocktail and she normally is not up for such spirit-forward cocktails.

 

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The vermouth was provided by Gölles.