Is vermouth vegetarian-compatible?

What to know about vermouth

Vermouth is aromatised fortified wine, and the thing that makes it vermouth rather than any other pre dinner drink is wormwood: Artemisia absinthium, the botanical that gives the German Wermut and the word vermouth itself. A wine base, a dose of neutral spirit, sugar and a long botanical infusion is the whole construction. If you are asking whether vermouth is high in sulfites, our grades say yes, and it is the only high mark on the page: sulfite is graded D, carried in from the wine base and topped up as preservative. Histamine sits at C, which is genuinely a step below the aperitif category as a whole, and tyramine is C beside it, so the fermented wine triggers are present without being extreme. FODMAPs and excess fructose are both C, and that single grade is averaging two very different bottles, because a bone dry extra dry and a sweet rosso are not the same sugar load at all. Fermentability for SIBO is graded E, as it is for anything alcoholic. Where vermouth is clean it is thoroughly clean: gluten A, lactose A, dairy protein A, nickel A, nightshade A, caffeine A, and only B for histamine liberation. The variable almost nobody controls for is what happens after the cork comes out. Vermouth is wine, not spirit, so an opened bottle oxidises on the shelf the way an opened bottle of white would, and the dusty bottle that has been beside the gin since last summer is not the drink it was when you bought it.