The Cabinet: The Lillet-Bianco Family

Lillet Blanc, Cocchi Americano, Dolin Blanc, Martini Bianco, Cinzano Bianco and cousins

~ THE LILLET-BIANCOS ~
Sweet white vermouth and like-minded aperitifs / 15-25% ABV / £10-£25 for 700ml
Friends with: sunshine, cigarettes, patios, lawns. Also, gin. And depending on the particular brand: tequila and mezcal, calvados, Scotch, brandy, amari, Suze, Fernet, Campari. Almost all of them go with strawberries, peaches, apricots, cucumber, elderflower, lemons, oranges and grapefruit. Some of them bend to chocolate, coffee and vanilla.

The Lillet-Biancos are a venerable family of aromatised wines that trace their ancestry all the way back to Roman times. Like the Bonapartes or the Orsini, you can find them in chateaux, palazzi and castillos all over Southern European - though their historic seat is in the old Kingdom of Savoy in the French-Italian borderlands.

Here we find the Dolins of Chambery and the Noillys of Marseille. Over in Piedmont are the sleek modern Cocchis, the big-in-the-70s Cinzanos and the down-on-their-heels Gancias. And then there are the Argentine expats, the Holy Roman Empire cousins, the bohemian upstarts from Spain - they get everywhere. Most of them lay claim to the ancient order of vermouth but not all of them: the Lillets of Pondensac insist that they are in fact “tonic wines” even as the Dolin Blancs and Martini Biancos chant “ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”

But these are tedious technical distinctions - arcane family quarrels. Suffice to say that each of the Lillet-Biancos is slightly different. They are cousins as opposed to siblings. But they are all slightly sweet fortified wines with added herbs and spices and sometimes what we have in common is more important than what sets us apart. At least when it comes to cocktails.

There is more than a touch of faded glamour to the Lillet-Biancos. You can usually find a representative poolside in Slim Aarons shoots; or touching down in the Sahara in a light aircraft in 1966; or flirting with Joan Collins; or providing the tinkling medium for ice-cubes in a Barcelona back alley. But while their heyday was a while ago now, we mustn’t discount the present.