It’s been ten years since the great Noilly Prat fiasco, the cocktail world’s very own New Coke scandal.
In 2009, Noilly Prat fiddled with the formula of what was then the favorite dry vermouth of martini connoisseurs. I was one of those mortified by the change. I used NP in my martinis and had little interest in seeing it altered, whatever the reason.
And so, when Noilly Prat announced its American product was being changed, I was among those with the foresight — well, really just a kind of scrambling desperation — to buy up what bottles of the old stuff I could find. I put three in my cellar, where they sat for a decade. At the holidays, I broke one of them out. I was astonished at what I found. More about that later.
Europeans and Americans consume vermouth in different ways. In Europe, vermouth is for drinking all on its lonesome. By contrast, since its introduction to the United States in the 19th century, vermouth has here been primarily something to use in cocktails, and one cocktail more than any other: the martini.
By the mid-20th century, tastes in martini-drinking had turned decidedly toward the austere, and Noilly Prat responded by making a drier, martini-specific vermouth for the American market. That was the version NP in 2009 declared obsolete, replacing it with the sweeter and more robust recipe used in the rest of the world.
Martini drinkers shunned the European version of Noilly Prat that showed up uninvited on liquor store shelves. We found unappealing its cloying sweetness; we griped about the new bottle, with its sensuous Coca-Cola curves, so out of keeping with proper martini deportment. On principle as much as on taste, we disdained changing the composition of the cocktail of the “American Century.”
Bacardi, which owns the Noilly Prat brand, had implied the stateside Noilly Prat product had been inferior. We were told the European version of their vermouth was the authentic stuff. We weren’t buying it. Literally.
Sales were so slow that Bacardi soon threw in the towel and brought the American version of Noilly Prat back. Ludovic Miazga, Noilly Prat man at Bacardi, lamented to drinks blogger W. Blake Gray in the summer of 2012 that he had his “personal preferences, but at the end of the day, we serve the consumer.”
By then many of us had long since moved on, especially since an excellent martini-worthy dry French vermouth, Dolin, was newly on the U.S. market. Eric Seed of importer Haus Alpenz had been bringing in Dolin from Chambery, France, for about a year when Noilly Prat made its great blunder. He says Dolin’s success was about the quality of his product and not dissatisfaction with change to Noilly Prat. But I suspect Dolin would have had more difficulty winning converts if NP hadn’t given their customers a reason to try the competition.
With Dolin available, I had forgotten about the Noilly Prat I had squirreled away years ago. That is, until Christmas when a houseful of guests depleted what vermouth I had at the ready. In the cellar, I found the decades-old bottles. Would it be any good?
“We actively advise against bottle-aging of vermouth,” says importer Seed. “It’s a wine designed to be enjoyed fresh.” And perhaps he’s right. You wouldn’t waste your cellar space with cases of Beaujolais Nouveau, for example. Not only wouldn’t it improve with age, what bubblegum charms the wine has would likely be lost.
But is vermouth the same? To my surprise and pleasure, the old bottle of Noilly Prat not only aged, it had aged in wonderful ways. No longer vanishingly pale, the wine was Sauternes-yellow. The botanicals had intensified, balancing a bright fruitiness. It was no longer something that could be described as extra dry, or even dry, but it does make for a delicious dusty-bottle variation on the classic martini.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
