Americans embrace aperitifs

An aperitifs is more than a drink; it's a healing ritual. Like kicking off your heels or loosening your tie at the end of a long, hot day, a sip of something chilly and aromatic—a vermouth, say, or aCampari and soda—is a ceremonial exhale, a way to stop the clock, buoy the spirit and stimulate the appetite before sitting down to dinner.

· The practice of the aperitif, or aperitivo in Italian—literally, the "opener" to a meal—has long been embraced in Europe, particularly in Italy and the south of France, though Britain's late Queen Mother was said to enjoy a Dubonnet and gin before lunch. It has spawned a kaleidoscope of aromatic fortified wines and herbal liqueurs whose recipes have been passed down through the generations with the solemnity of holy relics. Floral, fruity Lillet Blanc. Spicy Punt e Mes. Dry, vegetal Suze. So why have American drinkers been slow to get on board? Someone less charitable might blame our lingering Puritanism or timid palates or slavish zeal for the supersize and the high-proof. But my money's on inadequate education. Wormwood, hyssop, gentian—the foundational botanicals of many storied European aperitifs—sound, to the uninitiated, like the wicked witch's shopping list, not elements of an evening sipper. Without a tradition to anchor us, we've faced that shelf of mysterious foreign bottles and simply balked.

· But not anymore. Suddenly, it seems, a stateside aperitif conversion is under way, sparked by bartenders eager for distinctive new materials and fueled by the passion of a few creative winemakers and distillers. The result is a number of new domestically produced aperitifs: ripe fruit liqueurs, silky fortified wines and bracing herbal spirits. Though inspired by Continental classics, they are absolutely and idiosyncratically American.

· Admittedly, determining what qualifies as an aperitif can be slippery, but I have, via some archival research and many evenings of hands-on experimentation, arrived at a loose definition. To wit: It can be either a drink poured straight from a bottle or one mixed as a cocktail. It should be dry, or if at all sweet, then bitterly so. It should be gently alcoholic, at least in relative terms. It may be a complex liqueur, boasting dozens of different botanicals in its recipe, or as simple as a glass of sparkling wine (with or without the splash of crème de cassis that transforms it into a kir royale). It should stir your appetite, your senses, even your memory. One trickle of green-walnut vin de noix on my tongue, and I feel beneath my feet the cool, craggy stone terrace of a g?te in Gascony. Now, a new generation of aperitifs is calling to mind the mountains of Vermont, New York's Hudson Valley and Oregon's Willamette River.

· "When you're making an infused wine like a vermouth, playing with sugar levels and herbs and botanicals, the range of possibilities you can achieve is almost endless," said Mayur Subbarao, the lawyer-cum-mixologist who helped create a line of aperitif liqueurs launched in 2011 by New Orleans-based Bittermens Spirits. "European makers tend to stick to the boundaries of time-tested recipes—but that means when they do something well, they really nail it. It's become a uniquely American thing to try and break those boundaries down."

· Mr. Subbarao's respect for old-world aperitifs comes through in creations like Amère Sauvage, inspired by the category of liqueurs flavored with the herb gentian that includes the French aperitif Suze. Another Bittermens bottling, Amère Nouvelle, was conceived as a homage to Amer Picon, a bittersweet French liqueur of 19th-century vintage that was big among barmen until the 1970s, when the formula's proof and flavor profile were drastically altered. "As a cocktail enthusiast, I came at the project differently than an aperitif purist who wants to sip something on the rocks or with maybe just a splash of soda," he explained. "I wanted to recreate flavors that had been lost or had gotten hard to find, so that they could be used in a recipe from the 1920s or 1930s and the drink would taste the way it was intended."

· If Mr. Subbarao's liqueurs are a portal to another time, other American aperitif makers use theirs as odes to place. In the case of Andrea Loreto, founder of Eugene, Ore.-based Elixir, that would be his native Italy. When Mr. Loreto came to this country 15 years ago, he had already begun researching old liqueurs and spirits in libraries, antiquarian book shops and a cookbook that had belonged to his grandmother. One day, he happened upon a recipe for a bitter liqueur and decided to tinker. "I grew up around that kind of thing. Everyone drank it as an aperitif or to 'correct' coffee," he explained. It took three years of tweaking to come up with Calisaya, a viscous, herbal, apricot-colored spirit very much in the Italian mode, but with a tempered bitterness Mr. Loreto believes is in tune with American tastes. This spring, he released his second formula, Iris, a delicate and aromatic liqueur akin to St. Germain, though fashioned not from elderflower but from iris, the floral emblem of Florence, Mr. Loreto's hometown.

· Unlike Mr. Loreto, sommelier and "ma?tre liquoriste" Deirdre Heekin wasn't born into the aperitif tradition. But over years of travel and study, the gastronomic culture of Italy has seeped into her blood. Her twin allegiances—to her European muses and her New England home—are evident in each bottle of Orleans, the line of infused apple-based aperitifs that Ms. Heekin formulated in collaboration with Vermont-based Eden Ice Cider. Ms. Heekin began experimenting with herbal spirits and homemade cordials after returning from a 2002 trip through Calabria, where she encountered a rainbow of different rosolios, homemade liqueurs made from roses and other botanicals. "They were like nothing I'd ever seen before," she said. "It was a total aha moment." So, when Eden asked Ms. Heekin to consider developing domestic versions of the aperitifs she recalled fondly from her travels—using not wine, but Vermont ice cider as the base—she dove at the chance. Her first foray, Orleans Herbal, is a fresh, sweet-tart, champagne-colored brew, loosely modeled on Lillet; her second, Orleans Bitter, is rosy and bold, like a third-cousin of Campari with a tart berry edge. But that's where the comparisons end: Both of Ms. Heekin's formulas are fashioned exclusively from locally available ingredients. "In Europe, a lot of aperitifs contain citrus zest and skin; obviously, those don't grow in the Green Mountains," she said. Faced with the directive to keep things close to home, Ms. Heekin turned to plants like lemon balm and orange sage to bring out citrus notes. The results were revelatory. "It was amazing," she said, "to see how these homegrown ingredients—herbs from outside my door—could be so transporting."

· Delicious as they are, infused ice ciders might seem a rather narrow category on which to pin one's hopes for a Great American Aperitif Uprising. Domestic vermouth, though: That's a field worth watching, both for its propitious growth and dizzying diversity of style. Once a frumpy has-been, this infused fortified wine's rep as a sipping aperitif began to be rehabilitated during the craft cocktail boom of the early aughts, when old European brands like Dolin and Carpano were rereleased in America. Before long, enterprising souls started thinking "I can do that," and, voilà, more than a half-dozen American vermouths have hit the market since 2000.

· Whether or not these bottles would be recognizable to Mssrs. Noilly and Prat is anyone's guess. Historically, one of the core elements of vermouth has been the bitter botanical wormwood. But many American producers, with the notable exception of Ransom, based in Sheridan, Ore., have cast off such traditional components in favor of looser formulas.

· "I like being able to draw from tradition, but I don't want to be bound by it," said Patrick Taylor, head winemaker at Carlton, Ore.-based Cana's Feast. His rich, cinnamon-spiced Chinato D'Erbetti was the first Barolo chinato, a subset of sweet Italian vermouth made from Nebbiolo grapes, to be produced commercially in the U.S. This year, Mr. Taylor followed that project up with L'Afrique, a musky, blood-red vermouth redolent of turmeric and incense, sold under the Hammer & Tongs label.

· A continent's width away, Bianca Miraglia, the 29-year-old behind the Brooklyn-based label Uncouth Vermouth, agrees. "When I started, everyone said you can't make vermouth without gentian or wormwood or baking spices," she said. "But I never wanted to be a Carpano vermouth maker; I wanted to be a 16th-century-style one." Ms. Miraglia does work within a few self-imposed boundaries: using only botanicals she can forage or have grown locally, macerating them in wine made at Brooklyn's Red Hook Winery, relying on fruit or residual sugars in the wine for sweetness and fortifying with brandy distilled from a local winery's wine waste.

· True to Ms. Miraglia's word, there is a mysterious, antique alchemy in her bottles: the tart, crystalline Apple Mint; the lush and earthy Beet Eucalyptus; the spicy-sweet Serrano Chile Lavender. Like the best aperitifs, old-world or new, they are complex and enthralling drunk neat, and introduce bottomless profundity to any cocktail they're mixed into. If that won't transport you from the worries of the workday and awaken your palate to the meal ahead, I don't know what will.