The best cocktail ingredients are like Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction: They solve problems.

Specifically, they solve problems in a way that goes above and beyond their natural role or assumed domain. They’re like those colleagues at your workplace who have clearly defined roles that they are quite good at—but who also happen to be handy for just about any other task or project, well beyond what their job descriptions and titles would encompass. They are sometimes peculiar, with unusual personalities. But they are always useful. These are the highly talented people, and the bottles, that you want to have around at all times.

• Rittenhouse rye, this newsletter’s very first recommendation, is the most versatile rye whiskey, and one of if not the single most versatile base ingredients in all of cocktaildom.

• Bénédictine adds rich, sweet, herbal complexity to cocktails. It’s also a shelf stable sweetener that can be used almost like a spiced syrup in drinks like the Monte Carlo.

• Apple brandy is the cocktail kingdom’s friendliest spirit. It’s a brandy that drinks like a fruity, autumnal whiskey, and it pairs well with almost anything.

• Cynar! Regular readers know very well how I feel about Cynar. It really can do anything in a cocktail. It’s a bittersweet liqueur that can easily swap for Campari or nearly any other amaro. It’s a low-ABV sipper that drinks like a higher proof spirit. It can play the role of sweet vermouth, or act as a base spirit in a bitter, vegetal sour. You should put it in everything because it truly can do anything.

In the past, I have made extended individual cases for each of these ingredients—and at times I have recommended all three together.1

This week, I want to add another one to the Case For list: Cocchi Americano.

Cocchi Americano is a quinine-flavored, aromatized, fortified wine, with a bittersweet, herbal, lightly citrusy flavor profile. Like so many of the best cocktail ingredients, it boasts a complex, intriguing mix of flavors that are incredibly well balanced. It works as an aperitif, a not-quite vermouth, a spiced sweetener, and a lightly bitter liqueur all in one.

And like Cynar and Winston Wolf, it solves problems. In particular, it’s the best substitute for an old, no-longer-made cocktail ingredient that you can find in many, many historical recipes.

So in this newsletter, I’m going to make the case for Cocchi Americano.

In this edition, we’ll cover…

• A little bit about what Cocchi Americano is and where it comes from.

• Cocchi Americano’s place(s) in cocktails.

• Its overall versatility and its use as a substitute in old cocktail recipes.

• And finally, we’ll make a century-old, underrated, three-ingredient Manhattan/Rob Roy variation that uses—or at least can use—Cocchi Americano as part of a split-sweetener riff.

As a bonus, we’ll look at how to make a further iteration on that Manhattan/Rob Roy riff—because where there’s one good cocktail idea, there are probably more good cocktails.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at more uses for Cocchi Americano, in a variety of different cocktail styles and formats. There will be something for everyone, because Cocchi Americano is for everyone.

It’s Not Vermouth! (But…It’s Vermouth.)

The first thing to understand about Cocchi Americano is that it’s not actually a vermouth. Not technically, anyway. Rather, it’s a fortified, aromatized wine with a slightly bitter backbone, with quinine as the primary bittering agent.

Like so many amaros and vermouths and herbal liqueurs, no one knows exactly what’s in it, but it’s generally understood that there are notes of bitter orange, as well as elderflower, rose petal, juniper, coriander, rhubarb, and mace. Think of it as an orangey, spiced, bitter aperitif wine.

The second thing to understand about Cocchi Americano is that, for all practical and functional purposes, it’s a vermouth—and you should treat it like one. Don’t call it vermouth. Just useit it like the (not-technically-vermouth) vermouth that it is.

Specifically, you should treat it like a bitter, blanc vermouth—almost like a blanc vermouth version of Punt e Mes, the slightly bitter vermouth we’ve been using in various Manhattan riffs recently.

You see that most straightforwardly in the North Sea Oil, one of my very favorite cocktails, which uses a blend of Cocchi Americano and orange liqueur as the sweetener, against a split base of aquavit and peaty scotch.