Last year I got to visit Barcelona for KubeCon Europe, and one of the things I learned about there was "la hora del vermut", the daily time when Catalonians drop by their favorite bar and quaff a glass of iced vermut with olives or even pan con tomate.

"Wait," you ask, "vermouth? That bitter stuff I use to wash the ice in my martini?"

Well, yes and no. While most of the vermouth sold in the US is suitable only for a minority role in mixed drinks, higher quality vermouth exists, and it's meant for drinking straight. There's even multiple distinct styles, including Southern French, Northern French, Italian, Spanish, and Catalonian.

And the second thing I learned on my trip to Barcelona -- thanks to Devour Tours -- was that much of the Catalonian vermut is homemade. Behind the scenes at a bar, they explained how they made vermut every week ... and gave us a recipe. Since none of us can travel right now, you can do the same through an online class.

Since vermut is cheap and easy to make, and it's pretty hard to find Catalan-style in the US, you should make some too.

The main ingredient for vermut is leftover wine. The ideal wines for this are unoaked dry wines that are maybe a bit oxidized; wines you would have drunk when they were a couple years younger, or wines you did drink and this is the leftover half-bottle. The "unoaked" is important; oakey, tannic wines will turn super-tannic in the vermut-making and be undrinkable. So think verdejo, not chardonnay, and barbera, not cabernet. You can make it with all-white wine, or all-red, but I prefer a mix of red & white. Wine with screw-tops makes for easier refilling of the bottles later.

You'll also need some hard alcohol to boost the alcohol content to 20%. Many folks just use 100% pure ethanol, or even vodka, but since this is fortified wine I prefer brandy. For caramel notes (see below) dark rum can also be nice.

Catalonian vermut wants a variety of herbs and spices. According to our guide, that's at least one each from "acidic, herbal, floral, spicy, and bitter". The bitter, of course, is supplied by wormwood, which is where vermut gets its name; I use gentian as well. You can locate these via a local health-herb shop, or online. And yes, the miniscule quantities below are correct, it's potent stuff, and one 2oz bag will last you basically forever. For the rest, well, it's up to you and maybe seasonal availability. I give my personal formula below, but you won't have some of those things, so swap to your heart's content. Our guide, for example, sells a vermut he makes with rooribos tea.

Now, one of the ingredients that makes Catalonian vermut distinctive is the addition of dark caramel. This is why vermut in Barcelona is always dark in color, even when it's made entirely with white wine, and the caramel gives it depth and savory notes. However, it's also the single hardest part of the vermut-making process; not only do you need to make caramel, you need to add hot wine to it without somehow blowing it up all over your stove. So, now that I'm getting into making vermut on the regular, I looked for a workaround.

Stella Parks makes something she calls "toasted sugar", which is dry sugar that is partly caramelized through long, low heating. We have some for dessert-making, and I thought it might work for the caramel flavor in the recipe without messing around with liquids and hot caramel, especially if I used a more flavorful rum or brandy to fortify the wine. And indeed, it worked! Making the toasted sugar originally is a bit of a pain, but once you've made it you're good for the next 20 batches of vermut.

The main drawback is that the toasted sugar isn't quite as caramely, nor does it give quite as much color. That's why I use brandy to fortify, and use a mix of red & white wines.

So, without further preface, here's the recipe for the last batch I made. Remember the flavorings are all up to you; change them and make them your own.

vermut del borroso

Main ingredients:

• 2 bottles dry white wine (I used vinho branco)
• 1 bottle of dry, light red wine (I used an over-the-hill tempranillo)
• 750ml bottle of 80-proof brandy (preferably amber-colored such as Korbel)
• 200g toasted sugar, plus more to taste

Herbs and flavorings in this batch:

• 1 large pinch dried wormwood, around 1/4 tsp
• 1 small pinch dried gentian, around 1/8 tsp
• two branches flowering oregano or thyme (I had a lot in the yard)
• two stalks flowering parsley (same)
• 1 stalk fresh mint
• 1 tsp dried chamomile (like tea)
• 3 star anise pods
• 2 sticks cinnamon
• 6-8 strips dried orange and/or lemon peel (needs to be dried, not fresh)
• 5 whole cloves
• 2 bay leaves

Equipment required: two 1-gallon glass jars with wide mouths and tight-fitting lids, large fine-mesh strainer, long stirring spoon, funnel.

Pour all of the wine and brandy into one of the glass jars. Add all the herbs and spices but not the sugar. Make sure that all herbs & spices are submerged. Put the jar lid on tight, and put in a cool dark place to steep for 2-3 weeks. Once every 5 days or so, lift up the jar and swirl it a bit to make sure the spices distribute.

Save the bottles and their tops/corks, you'll need them.

After 2-3 weeks, strain the vermut into the second jar through the fine-mesh strainer, making sure to get all of the little bits of spice and flowers out. Add the 200g of sugar, and stir thouroughly until completely dissolved. Leave overnight, tightly sealed.

The next day, taste the vermut for sweetness. Add more toasted sugar if it's not well-balanced to your tongue. Leave the jar for 24-48 hours after the last addition of sugar. Then, pour back into the wine and brandy bottles you emptied, and label it.

Makes 3L, or 4 bottles.

Serve chilled, over ample ice cubes with a wedge of orange and an olive, alongside some salty snacks.

Tasting parties are a great foodie activity for an evening in with friends. If you stick to tastings of purchased, semi-perishable foods, then you have an activity for a weeknight party as well; you do your shopping the weekend before. The classic tastings are wine, cheese and chocolate, because they offer quite range of variety and almost everyone likes them. They even go together; I've done a number of wine-and-chocolate tastings myself. Even for the "big three" though, you have to decide what kind of tasting you're going to do.

The first kind of tasting is a "range" tasting, where you taste a range of different things within your category in order to train your palate or get the full flavor of what's available from a single source. This is probably the better kind of tasting to do with friends who are not that gourmet or at least new to being foodies. For serious foodies, you can make it challenging by blind tasting and asking people to guess what they're trying. Examples of this:

• Tasting a chardonnay, merlot, syrah and port from the same vintner or wine region.
• Tasting three different bars (milk, dark, varietals) and two truffles from the same chocolatier
• Tasting four different cheeses from Northern Italy (Parmigiano, Fior di Latte, Talleggio, Mascarpone)
• Tasting five different cheeses from a single cheesemaker.

The second kind of tasting you can do involves tasting very similar products from a variety of sources, generally to compare quality. Usually these kinds of tastings lend themselves more to "serious" tasting, with blind tastes and scorecards, and are more fun with a bunch of friends who see themselves as serious foodies. Examples of these would be:

• Tasting champagnes from five different cellars.
• Tasting regular dark chocolate from 4 different chocolatiers
• Tasting single-origin dark chocolate from four different countries.
• Tasting five different cheddar cheeses, either from different places or different cheesemakers in the same region.

You'll notice that I'm recommending four or five different samples in all of the above. I find that that's the right number to strike a balance between having enough to make the tasting interesting, and palate (and wallet) exhaustion. If you're will a really hard-core crowd and have a long evening, you might go as high as seven items; beyond that, only a trained professional is going to notice differences. Also, it's useful to have something complimentary to cleanse palates between tastings: mineral water, crackers, bread, cheese and fruit can all work depending on what's being tasted.

Also, you're making a mistake if you limit yourself to only wine, cheese and chocolate. There are thousands of other possible tastings; pretty much any food which has a variety of preparations or ingredients. Here's some general tips for holding a successful tasting party:

1. Set aside 2-3 hours for the tasting. A slower tasting avoids palate fatigue and encourges fun, so don't be afraid to draw things out.
2. Pick something which everyone coming over likes. Don't assume, check with them.
3. Have a "palate cleanser" to eat or drink between tastings, such as bread, crackers, sparkling water, or cake.
4. Some items require tasting on things, such as butter, salt, olive oil and hot sauce. Pick "neutral" items of good quality for those.
5. If items need to be tasted hot or cold, plan to bring only one or two out at a time.
6. If doing an alcohol tasting, make sure nobody needs to drive home.

If you've done these before, or your friends are sufficiently "gourmet", you can make tasting parties more fun with additions like secret ballot and guessing games. For example, you can have each person write their evaluation of each tasting down on slips of paper, and then read those out once the tasting is done for "impartial tastings". If your friends are sufficiently involved, you can have them bring over the various items to taste, one or two per person, with some coordination beforehand; this works well with secret ballot. You can also hide the details of the items being tasted and have people try to guess what they're tasting, with token prizes for the winners. I was pretty shocked when someone correctly guessed "Pinot Noir from the North California coast" at a wine tasting!

What follows is an idea list of other kinds of tastings you could do:

Tasting a range of things:

• Olives: Picholine, Nicoise, Castelvano, Manzanilla, Kalamata, Oil-cured
• Hams: Virginia, Prosciutto, Sopresatta, Serranno, Jamon du pays
• Smoked Fish: trout, whitefish, salmon, sturgeon
• Pickled vegetables: dill pickles, gerkins, caperberries, asparagus, greenbeans, etc.
• Beer: blonde, IPA, amber, wheat, porter, stout
• Fancy Salt: Fleur de Sel, red, black, Sel Gris.
• Whiskey: Bourbon, Canadian, Irish, Scotch
• Peppers (for the brave): Thai, Serrano, Jalopeno, Pasilla, Anaheim, Habanero
• Vinegars: cider, white wine, red wine, balsamic.
• Coffee: brewed different ways: french press, moka pot, vaccuum pot, toddy and drip.
• Apples (in October): Granny Smith, Rome, Fuji, Pink Lady, Arkansas Black
• Tomatoes (in July): Early Girl, Lemonboy, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple, Roma
• Herbal Liquors: Chartruse, Frangelico, Benedictine, Dubonet, Campari

Comparing very similar things:

• Balsamic vinegar from four different producers.
• Olive oils from five different presses.
• Smoked salmon from three or four different smokehouses, or smoked with different woods.
• Bacon from four different producers, or with four different preparations.
• Coffees from five different roasteries.
• Six different coffee blends/origins from the same roastery.
• Vodka or Gin from five different distilleries.
• Four different single-malt Scotches.
• Butters from five different dairies.
• Soy sauces from different producers, with sushi.
• IPA beers from four different breweries.
• Hot sauces from five different manufacturers.
• Mineral waters from five different springs.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas for your own home tastings. Blog them, and link back to this post.