How to make Vermouth and Amaro with Foraged Botanicals
July 29, 2020A deep dive into the drunken botany of making bitter-sweet drinks like vermouth and amaro with foraged botanicals
A deep dive into the drunken botany of making bitter-sweet drinks like vermouth and amaro with foraged botanicals
The young flower and leaf buds of rowan trees, and some other closely related species, offer delicious almond flavours to foragers in the spring.
By opening our eyes and imaginations to the full extent of our wild larder, its perfectly possible to make any spice-led dish from around the world using fungi, seaweeds and the seeds, leaves, flowers and roots of common wild plants.
There are over 1500 members of the carrot/parsley – or more correctly – apiaceae – family worldwide, and around 100 varieties in the UK. Including well known delights such as fennel, coriander, dill, parsley, and celery, and also some notoriously toxic species like hemlock and hemlock water-dropwort, this family presents some major gastronomic – and catastrophic – opportunities for foragers
Really, such a delicious cocktail should have a more intriguing name. But when we tasted this, after 3 days foraging Islay in beautiful sunshine for the ingredients, its crisp aromatics just sung of the islands woods, marshes, hedgerows, moors and coast…