“If you look them up online, you’ll see that, seven years apart, I’m quoted in articles in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle that vermouth is about to have its moment,” says vintner and, yes, vermouth maker Carl Sutton. “If you keep saying it, it has to happen.” That’s the very short answer as to why Sutton is in town, working with Jesse Smith from Casitas Valley Farm and Kyle Hollister from the just-begun T.W. Hollister & Co. Wines.
That heralded vermouth moment will be epicentered right here in Santa Barbara, if the trio has its way. Sutton started making vermouths back in 2009 at his eponymous San Francisco winery, but he met Smith when the latter was up north for a sustainability conference. They shared a love of vermouth, which is fortified wine flavored with botanicals that, alas, tends to be mass-produced and thought of as a mere mixer. They even geek out on something called Vermouth: An Annotated Bibliography, which Smith said contains “every instance of vermouth in literature.”
Sutton also came to town to be an artist in residence at The Squire Foundation, which is expanding the notion of what cultural creatives can be. Now, through Smith’s position on the board at the S.B. Botanic Garden and through Hollister’s family connection at the Hollister Ranch, Sutton is hunting botanicals to make a largely Santa Barbara–specific vermouth. He made one in Northern California based on 17 plants, so that’s a lot of foraging. “Wandering around the Hollister Ranch, we’d come upon something and go, ‘What is this plant? Does it smell good? Should we eat it?’” said Sutton. “You look at the landscape with a very different mindset, like a shopping market.”