Italy · Langhe

Mancino Vermouth

Italian vermouth made at a 1957 Asti distillery, with botanicals crushed in a 1930 mill and rested six months before bottling.

The producer

Giancarlo Mancino grew up in Pignola, a hill village in Basilicata, and spent his career inside bars and restaurants before he went north to Piedmont looking for something to make rather than pour. He found it in Asti, where a family-run distillery established in 1957 was still operating with its original equipment, including a botanical crushing mill built in 1930. Mancino did not commission a new facility. He composed his vermouth around the equipment already there, building three initial recipes from about forty botanicals sourced from Italy, England, Vietnam and India, with Trebbiano di Romagna IGP as the base wine for the core range.

The production sequence sets Mancino apart from most commercial vermouth. Each botanical is crushed in the 1930 mill, then extracted separately in a hydroalcoholic solution for up to 30 days, so herbs and resins are given the time each one actually needs. The extracts are blended with Trebbiano, caster sugar and sugar-beet neutral spirit, cooled, filtered through linen fibres for approximately one week, and rested in stainless-steel tanks for six months before bottling. The range runs from the angular Secco to the red Rosso Amaranto, the barrel-aged Vecchio and a Chinato built on Barbera d'Asti rather than Trebbiano, with darker fruit and a firmer bitter finish. The brand launched at Bar Convent Berlin in 2012, sold immediately, and Giancarlo directed that most production would leave Italy.

Known for

Vermouth di Torino; range from dry Secco to barrel-aged Vecchio and Barbera-based Chinato

Notable facts

The story

The mill that was already there

Giancarlo Mancino arrived at the family distillery in Asti already knowing what he wanted to make. What he did not expect was the mill. It had been built in 1930 and had been crushing botanical ingredients at the same facility ever since, used by whoever ran the distillery before him, running on the same mechanism it had always run on. Mancino kept it. Every botanical in the range, sourced from Italy, England, Vietnam and India, still passes through that machine before extraction. The distillery dates to 1957; the mill predates it by more than two decades. When Mancino stood up at Bar Convent Berlin in 2012 and presented his first three vermouth recipes and they sold immediately, the production equipment behind them was older than most of the bartenders in the room.

From the atlas

Mancino Vermouth

At A Glance

Producer: Mancino Vermouth Type: Vermouth producer Location: Asti, Piedmont, Italy Appellation: Vermouth di Torino Base wines: Trebbiano di Romagna IGP; Barbera d'Asti (Chinato) Range: Secco, Bianco Ambrato, Rosso Amaranto, Vecchio, Chinato

The Producer

Giancarlo Mancino grew up in Pignola, a hill village in Basilicata in southern Italy, and spent his working life inside bars and restaurants before he went looking for something to make rather than pour. He found it in Asti, Piedmont, where a family-run distillery established in 1957 was still operating with its original equipment. Mancino did not build a new production facility. He composed his vermouth around the equipment already there.

The brand presented its first range at Bar Convent Berlin in 2012 and was an immediate success. Mancino sells predominantly abroad, a commercial decision Giancarlo made himself. Production is entirely Italian, and the bottles sit within the Vermouth di Torino appellation, formalised by Italy's Ministry of Agricultural Policy in 2017 with rules requiring Piedmont white wines, predominantly Italian botanicals and a minimum bottling strength of 16% ABV.

Place

Asti is a city in southern Piedmont, better known in wine terms for Moscato d'Asti and Barbera d'Asti than for vermouth production. But Piedmont is the canonical home of Turin-style vermouth, and the 2017 Vermouth di Torino appellation formalised what the region had been producing since the eighteenth century. Under the appellation rules, the base wine must come from Piedmont and the botanical blend must be predominantly Italian.

Mancino's base wine is not Piedmontese. The core range uses Trebbiano di Romagna IGP, a neutral, high-acid white from Emilia-Romagna, chosen because its clean profile does not compete with the botanical extracts. The Chinato breaks from that and uses Barbera d'Asti, a red grape grown locally in Asti, whose darker fruit and firmer acidity carry the quinine bitterness of chinato production differently from a white base. The production facility is in Asti; the base wine comes from further east. Both choices are deliberate.

Soil And Site

Mancino is a vermouth producer, not a wine estate. There are no owned vineyards, no estate parcels and no farming practices to report. The Trebbiano di Romagna IGP base wine is sourced from Emilia-Romagna; the Barbera d'Asti used for Chinato comes from the Asti zone of Piedmont. The physical address that matters is the distillery in Asti, where the crushing mill, extraction vessels and stainless-steel resting tanks determine how the botanical character develops.

Story

Giancarlo Mancino's career in hospitality gave him a precise idea of what good vermouth should do on a cocktail list and what most available vermouth did not. The quality gap was his starting point. When he reached Asti and found the family distillery, the working mill from 1930 was still in place. He kept it.

The original range was three recipes, each built from about forty botanicals sourced from Italy, England, Vietnam and India. The formula was not announced as a revival or a tribute to history. It was presented at Bar Convent Berlin in 2012 as a contemporary Italian vermouth with a serious production process behind it. It sold immediately, and Giancarlo directed that most of it would leave Italy.

In 2017, when Italy's government formalised the Vermouth di Torino appellation, Mancino was already operating within those parameters. The same year, the brand extended the range with a limited edition produced exclusively for Mandarin Oriental Tokyo. In 2023, Mancino and its distribution partners launched what they described as the first vermouth in low-carbon, low-waste circular packaging. The production method behind all of it has not fundamentally changed since 2012.

Vineyards And Cellar

Every botanical in the Mancino range is crushed in the 1930 mill at the Asti facility. After crushing, each botanical is extracted separately in a hydroalcoholic solution for up to 30 days. The long, individual extraction pulls out aromatic compounds more precisely than a combined maceration, and the separate timing means herbs that need two weeks and resins that need four weeks are not pushed or held back to fit a single schedule.

The extracts are blended with Trebbiano di Romagna IGP, caster sugar and a sugar-beet neutral spirit at 30% ABV. After cooling, the liquid filters through linen fibres for approximately one week. Linen filtration is slower and finer than most commercial filter media; it leaves a clear liquid without sediment and without the abruptness of tight mechanical filtration. Following that, the vermouth rests in stainless-steel tanks for six months before bottling.

Mancino Vecchio follows the same base process and then goes into barrel for 12 months. The barrel ageing rounds the botanical edges and introduces an oxidative, slightly woody quality not present in the tank-rested core range. Mancino Chinato uses Barbera d'Asti as its base rather than Trebbiano, and the cellar process is adapted for a wine with more colour, body and tannin from the start.

Wines

The Mancino range runs from dry and pale to barrel-aged and bitter, with the base wine choice doing as much work as the botanical selection.

Secco is the dry white expression, built on Trebbiano di Romagna IGP with about forty botanicals. Tasting notes place it at the austere end of the vermouth spectrum: dried herbs, citrus peel, a clean and narrow finish. It does not lean sweet.

Bianco Ambrato is the white-gold expression, also Trebbiano-based, with a richer botanical weight than the Secco and an amber colour that signals more botanical saturation. The palate is softer and fuller than the dry white, with a bitter-floral mid-palate and a longer finish.

Rosso Amaranto is the red vermouth and the one with the longest independent tasting record. It rests for six months in stainless steel before bottling. Wine Enthusiast records dried fruit, bitter orange and cinnamon with a long herbal finish. Difford's Guide notes a bitter-sweet interplay of botanical layers and calls out complexity and balance. The Trebbiano base keeps the acidity present even as the botanical sweetness and red colouring build.

Vecchio is the barrel-aged expression. Twelve months in barrel produces a fuller, rounder, more oxidative character than anything in the tank-rested range. Vanilla and dried wood join the botanical bitterness; the finish is longer and warmer.

Chinato is built on Barbera d'Asti rather than Trebbiano. Barbera d'Asti gives Chinato added depth and complexity. It is the most wine-like of the range and the furthest from the cocktail bar context of the other four.

In The Glass

The Secco is the most angular of the range. Dried chamomile, bitter lemon peel and a faint wormwood note rise first; the mid-palate is thin and herb-forward, and the finish is short and clean. The Trebbiano acidity keeps it from reading as sweet even at low-sugar levels.

The Bianco Ambrato opens with more aromatic warmth, white flowers and a faint honey note, then turns bitter and herbal in the mouth. The finish is longer than the Secco and faintly resinous.

The Rosso Amaranto is the most layered of the three tank-rested expressions. Dried cherry, bitter orange peel, cinnamon and clove are present in sequence rather than together; the bitterness builds slowly and holds through the finish. The six months in stainless steel allow the botanical blend to knit without introducing any oak or oxidative character.

The Vecchio is warmer and rounder in every dimension. Dried fig, vanilla, a faint toasted wood note and the same botanical bitterness as the Rosso Amaranto, but softened at the edges by barrel time. It lingers.

The Chinato is drier in feel despite the quinine bitterness, because the Barbera d'Asti base carries more tannin and acidity than Trebbiano. Dark cherry, orange rind, gentian and a firm, long bitter finish. It is not a cocktail ingredient; it is an after-dinner drink on its own.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Rosso Amaranto. It is the vermouth Mancino is most reviewed and most consistently described, and it demonstrates what the long botanical extraction and the six-month tank rest actually do. Dried fruit and bitter orange arrive first, then cinnamon and a slow herbal bitterness that builds and holds rather than cutting off. The Trebbiano base keeps the acidity present, so the sweetness never becomes heavy. There is no oak, no oxidation, no wood. Drink it over ice with a strip of orange peel, or mix it into a Negroni in place of a house vermouth and it will change the drink noticeably. The production process behind it, forty botanicals extracted separately for up to 30 days each, linen-filtered and then rested for six months, is clearest in this bottle because there is nothing else in the way.

Anecdote

Giancarlo Mancino arrived at the family distillery in Asti already knowing what he wanted to make. What he did not expect was the mill. It had been built in 1930 and had been crushing botanical ingredients at the same facility ever since, used by whoever ran the distillery before him, running on the same mechanism it had always run on. Mancino kept it. Every botanical in the range, sourced from Italy, England, Vietnam and India, still passes through that machine before extraction. The distillery dates to 1957; the mill predates it by more than two decades. When Mancino stood up at Bar Convent Berlin in 2012 and presented his first three vermouth recipes and they sold immediately, the production equipment behind them was older than most of the bartenders in the room.

Final Word

Mancino is a modern Italian vermouth with an old facility behind it. The Asti distillery, the 1930 mill and the long botanical extraction are not decorative history; they are what separates the range from blended-and-bottled supermarket vermouth. The Vermouth di Torino appellation gives the bottles a legal framework, but the production sequence, individual extractions of up to 30 days, linen filtration and six months of tank rest, is the real differentiator. Start with the Rosso Amaranto, then move toward the Vecchio or the Chinato depending on how much bitterness and weight you want in the glass.

Sources

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