A Revelation in Vermouth

Back in 1997, Andrew Quady, the founder of Quady Winery, speaking with friends in the restaurant biz, was dared to come up with a vermouth that tastes good, and we mean GOOD. The kind of good that means you want more of it in your glass, not less. What his friends didn’t realize, was that underneath his obvious passion for making wine, Andrew has an enormous love of plants, the outdoors, and all things aroma-therapeutic.

Andrew spent a couple of years fiddling around with herbs from around the world – lavender, linden, gentian, galangal, orris – to name but a few, and perfumed his house up so beautifully that his family started to develop an aptitude for picking out all kinds of delicate flavors and aromas. At the end of his obsession over bitter qualities balanced with sweet, Vya Sweet and Vya Extra Dry Vermouth were born in 2000.

Exotic and homegrown at the same time, the ingredients in Vya Vermouth start with Orange Muscat grapes grown near the winery in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Quality grapes give the vermouth good viscosity and background fruit and flavor not found in any other vermouth. In the sweet Vya, some of Quady’s port style wine is mixed in for added color and dimension. The other pieces of the puzzle – the herbs – come from India, Albania, Russia, Spain, Morocco, to name a few, and combined in the right proportions they end up being something unique made only at Quady Winery.

The recipe behind Vya Vermouth is a secret. Only natural ingredients are used: whole herbs, wine, and grape spirit. The exact 15 to 20 varieties of herbs – the proportions, the infusions – are all stored away in winemaker Michael Blaylock’s notes. This secret recipe is tweaked from year to year as, for example, the character of the cinnamon from Indonesia changes, and he finds that cinnamon from Mexico brings in a needed dimension. The harvest quality of the grapes also fluctuates each year, but inspite of changing conditions, the quality and flavor of the Vya remain consistent. Through his own nose, as well as meticulous math equations and careful oversight, Blaylock manages the production of Vya and assures consumers that when they buy a bottle of Vya, their expectations will be met.

A Different Kind of Winery

At Quady Winery we make sweet and aperitif wines from varietals and in styles hard to find anywhere else. Andrew made a name for himself in the '80s as the muscat king by introducing first Essensia, an Orange Muscat varietal and then Elysium, made from Black Muscat. These two aromatic and intense wines broke new ground in the sweet wine field. Rather than producing soft muscats from commonly used muscat varieties, Quady made intense, aromatic and flavorful wines from underappreciated, little-used varieties. Andrew then introduced Electra, a frizzante moscato; Deviation, an aromatized dessert wine; Palomino Fino, an Amontillado style Sherry; and Starboard, a port-style wine.

Like our wines, our winery is made up of some extraordinary characters. Our dedicated winemaker, Michael Blaylock and our general manager, Cheryl Russell have been with us since 1984. Our production manager Daniel Mejia and our Cellar Master, Mauro Molina, have been with us since the late 1980s. It takes practice to make the best quality products, and these winery veterans have collectively put in more man hours than there are grapes in a harvest.

We’ve been keeping it sweet since 1975 as the makers of America's premier sweet muscats, port-styles, and vermouth. We welcome visitors to our tasting room and make frozen muscat drinks in the summer.

To read the full Quady Winery story and find out more about our other wines, visit www.quadywinery.com.

Vermouth Apéritif

The French word apéritif is a beautiful one. In Latin it means "to open". That's exactly what a great vermouth does. All of the herbs combine to open up your palate and stimulate your digestive juices before a meal.

Vermouth has a long history as a favorite apéritif in Europe and Argentina, beginning in the 1800s in Italy. First used as a tonic for intestinal worms, vermouth tasted like the bitter active ingredient that it derives its name from: wormwood. As time passed, more herbs and less wormwood was used to improve the taste.

In the U.S. we haven't fully appreciated a good vermouth in a long while, arguably ever. Whereas in France and Italy the young and old have taken to an apéritif hour before dinner with drinks on the lighter side, in the states we've been a bit more into the hard stuff. But no more! These days we're into tasting more than the alcohol in our cocktails, and good vermouth is naturally making its way into more of our glasses.

To learn more about all of the different styles of vermouth and the fascinating world of aperitifs, you can visit Vermouth101.com.

 

Andrew Quady in one of his favorite places, the garden.

 

Dried, whole herbs used in Vya Vermouth

 

Michael Blaylock, Quady Winery winemaker since 1984, Vya Vermouth maker since 1999.

 

The 2013 Quady Crew.