Turin - Caffe Mulassano

Of this week in Italy two places really stood out for me as having delivered everything I was hoping to find - Caravatti in Mantova, and Mulassano in Turin. Both had been around for over a century, had some very attractive interior and exterior features, really friendly and welcoming staff and the crowning glory - they produced their own aperitivo. In fact, the beautiful Caffe Mulassano has two of its own products - an Alpine aperitivo and a vermouth.

The aperitivo is red (it seems they mostly have to be, regardless of what they’re actually made from) and is unmistakeably Alpine in terms of flavour profile - those strong, herbal notes you might be familiar with from drinks like Jagermeister. This made it feel like quite a warming, wintery sort of drink to me, but Sara, the very nice lady behind the bar, said that in summer the locals have it in a Spritz, in place of the usual Aperol or Campari. The kind of Spritz I could imagine enjoying on the porch of a log cabin.

The vermouth is yellow in colour, but is actually a sweet vermouth, and, in contrast to the aperitivo, had quite a fruity, summery sort of flavour. Very refreshing. Sara suggested you could mix the two together to make a Milano e Torino, which I suppose would instead have to be called a Torino e Torino.

Unlike Caravatti, the bottles here are labelled - rather attractively in fact. For some reason I didn’t quite understand, the vermouth has on the label both the coat of arms of the Savoy family, and of the house of Windsor. Quite what the connection to the British monarch is I am unsure. Also unlike Caravatti, you can buy the bottles here to take away. I bought a bottle of the vermouth, since that seemed like the most appropriate thing to bring back from Turin, and I’d hoped to find lots of small vermouth producers here. Alas the city seems to have largely turned its back on the product it gave birth to, and most of the other historic caffes had barely any vermouth at all. I suspect at one time many of them would have produced their own house vermouth, today it seems it may only be Mulassano keeping this tradition alive (if anybody knows of any more I’d be very keen to hear from you).