Oka Kura Bermutto: Japan's First Vermouth, and It Isn't Made From Wine

Vermouth is aromatized, fortified wine. That is the definition, and it is the part Oka Kura ignores.

Bermutto, the Japanese pronunciation of the word, is junmai sake fortified with rice shochu and infused with Japanese botanicals. No grapes anywhere.

Where It Comes From

Tsutsumi Distillery in Kumamoto, which has been making shochu for 141 years.

If that region rings a bell it is because we have written about this house twice already: the Oka gin and the Oka rice vodkas come from the same place, built on the same rice and the same water from the Kuma River. Bermutto is 100% rice, and 18% ABV.

It was Japan's first contemporary vermouth. Not the first Japanese product to call itself vermouth in a marketing sense. The first serious attempt at the category from a Japanese producer.

Dry and Sweet

The dry is the flagship, built on four botanicals:

• Yomogi — Japanese mugwort. Worth noting that wormwood is what makes vermouth vermouth; yomogi is its close relative, and using it is the whole conceptual move.
• Yuzu
• Kabosu — a sharper, higher-acid citrus
• Sansho — Japanese pepper, which brings that faint numbing tingle

The sweet adds a fifth: ume, the sour Japanese plum, with its astringency balanced by raw Okinawan cane sugar.

Yoshi's Saketini

The sweet Bermutto is what goes into our Yoshi's Saketini.

A martini asks a lot of its vermouth. There is nowhere for it to hide. Swapping in something built on sake rather than wine changes the drink at the base rather than at the garnish: softer, rounder, with the ume sitting where the wine's acidity would normally be.

That is the appeal of the whole range. A vermouth substitution is one of the quietest ways to make a familiar cocktail taste like somewhere else, and this is the most convincing version of it we have found.

What Else It Is Good For

Anywhere vermouth goes. Negronis, martinis, manhattans, or over ice with soda and a twist, which is how a lot of people in Europe drink vermouth and almost nobody here does.

The dry in particular is worth trying on its own before you put it in anything, if only to work out what sansho is doing.

Try It at Juraku

Oka Kura Bermutto is behind the bar at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. Yoshi's Saketini is on the cocktail list.