This summer’s drink isn’t a 12-ingredient cocktail; it’s vermouth and soda. Bartenders who spent years watching customers reach for the same handful of spirits now pour a lightly fortified wine, topped with sparkling water and finished with olives. The drink delivers an easy afternoon pour inspired by European aperitivo hour, and American bars are only catching up.
Vermouth, the botanically complex, lightly fortified wine, asks for almost nothing. Top it with sparkling water, add a few good olives and it’s done. Alexandria Bowler, lead bartender at Emeril’s in New Orleans, named it her pick for the drink of this summer in a recent industry survey, and it carries the kind of understated confidence that comes from knowing something most people haven’t figured out yet. It arrives on American menus at exactly the right moment.
Vermouth and soda is the drink bartenders pour
The drink is vermouth and soda with olives. Not a cocktail with several ingredients and a smoked rosemary garnish. Not a frozen situation in a novelty glass. Just vermouth that’s been sitting confidently on European bars for centuries, topped with sparkling water and finished with a few good olives. Bowler named it in a recent bartender survey published in May, citing its low-ABV pour, its connection to the aperitif world and how naturally it pairs with the tinned fish, good butter, pickles and crusty bread dominating tables right now.
Aperitifs pull ahead at the bar
The cultural moment Bowler describes has real numbers behind it. A 2026 drinks industry report that tracks bar trends to watch this year found that cordials, aperitifs and amari now outpace traditional base spirits, including gin, vodka, whiskey and rum. That’s not a small observation from a niche corner of the drinks world.
Southern Glazer’s, the world’s largest beverage alcohol distributor with operations across 44 states, led the research. When their team says aperitifs are leading the category, the domestic market tends to follow. Vermouth sits squarely at the center of that move.
Drinking less doesn’t mean drinking boring
The appetite for something lower in alcohol isn’t new, but the intensity of it in 2026 is. A recent beverage report found that 51% of consumers now express interest in low-ABV cocktails. That’s not a fringe preference but a majority, and the people driving it aren’t swearing off fun. A 2026 cocktail trends report found that 34% of younger U.S. consumers choose to drink, eat and socialize earlier in the evening, a behavior the report calls the “daycap,” borrowed from European drinking culture where the aperitivo hour has anchored social life for generations. Vermouth and soda, served cold in the late afternoon with something salty alongside it, is exactly the drink that ritual was built for.
What makes vermouth worth knowing
Here’s what most people miss about vermouth: it is not a mixer that waits around to be rescued by gin. It’s a category of its own, a wine base infused with botanicals, herbs, roots and spices, bottled at roughly 15-18% ABV, meant to be sipped with the same intention as a well-made cocktail.
The small-production, low-intervention expressions showing up in bars right now, from producers like Dolin, Lo-Fi Aperitifs and Mancino, bring a complexity that mass-market bottles don’t. Ordered over ice with soda and a handful of olives, it delivers brine, botanicals and a gentle fizz that doesn’t demand anything of the afternoon. Bowler noted it pairs naturally with the conservas and tinned fish boards, pickles and oily, crusty bread that have become the default spread at the kind of bars where people actually want to linger.
The aperitif era is just getting started
The same beverage report puts consumer interest in fortified wine cocktails at 46%, meaning a large share of drinkers haven’t discovered the category yet. That gap is where the next wave lives. Industry cocktail forecasters predict that Italian aperitif-forward serves will push the Aperol Spritz aside as the definitive aperitivo of the moment, with bartenders leaning into combinations of fresh citrus and bitter Italian aperitifs rather than the same orange bottle that’s been everywhere for a decade. Vermouth and soda is the most accessible entry point into that world. No technique required, no obscure liqueur to track down.
Pour it like you mean it
The drink of summer doesn’t always announce itself with a neon garnish and a social media moment. Sometimes it arrives quietly, in a stemmed glass with a few olives, ordered by someone who knows what they’re doing and isn’t in a hurry. Vermouth and soda is that drink. Find a bottle of something good, add cold sparkling water, drop in an olive or three and drink it like someone who has spent a summer in Barcelona. The fact that it happens to be lower in alcohol and easy to pace through a long afternoon is almost beside the point.
Jennifer Allen is a retired professional chef and long-time writer. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including MSN, Yahoo, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. These days, she’s busy in the kitchen developing recipes and traveling the world, and you can find all her best creations at Cook What You Love.