I make vermouth in Marfa, a town of about 1,800 people on a high plateau in far West Texas, where the land is mostly sky and the botanicals have to be tough to survive. That toughness is what I am trying to get into the bottle.
I came to it sideways: first through bartending, then through a long argument with a friend about why nobody made a vermouth that tasted of the Southwest. The argument ended when I started macerating creosote in mason jars. The friend now drinks it and claims it was their idea.
Globes have always been my favourite object. They are the most honest thing about travelling: the whole of it, small enough to turn with one hand. Vermouth does the same job for a landscape. Each plate on this globe is a place where that went well.
Firm opinions held: anchovies are great. Opinions held loosely: everything else.
✦Where to find the maker
Sundays at noon for the Gilda Hour. Weekday mornings after a storm, somewhere off Highway 90 with a bag of creosote. Otherwise in the cellar, which is cool, dark and not open to visitors, though letters are welcome.