I brought a bottle of vermouth back from Spain and waited to open it until oranges were at their peak flavor, because what you do is pour it over ice and garnish with orange peels and olives. I added a dash of orange bitters. A true aperitif, vermouth is what you drink first. Vermouth is mentioned six times in The Gray Notebook, the diary of the Catalan writer Josep Pla from 1918 to 1919. All but one of these mentions are in the summer months. The first three times it is translated as an “aperitif with olives,” and the fourth time as a “martini.” This could mean the word is a general term for any kind of aperitif, but I doubt it, because in the fifth instance the identical language (vermut amb olives) is translated as an “aperitif of vermouth and olives.” In the final reference, a man the writer is talking to “pauses, nibbles on an olive, takes a sip of vermouth,” and ends up with “a slightly sweeter face.”

(Photo: Barcelona metro station, 2014.)

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