Lyre’s Aperitif Rosso - Non-Alcoholic Red Vermouth

Bit on a sweet side but it has complex flavors and is perfect with a splash of lime. Will be buying again.

For me this has a strongly citrus note with fair bit of sweetness to it and should be quite usable in places where you might use a vermouth. However, for my taste, it's really missing more of the mild bitterness and herbal/floral notes a really nice red vermouth will have. They are there, they are just not as strong as I would like and I think in a tonic they seem to get lost a little too easily compared to a good vermouth. I don't think the vanilla is as noteworthy here as the tasting notes would seem to imply, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

In any case using as a straight vermouth (neat, at least) I don't think it's really usable that way, which is perfectly fine. Most of these "replacement" versions seem to be primarily meant for use as a mixer with the original spirit being a guide for how it might be used. It may be more passable on the rocks, however, perhaps with a splash of lime, but you may need to use a shaker or otherwise add a bit of water to thin out the sweetness just tad. A decent contender, but so far I prefer Versin (which I don't believe is sold here, unfortunately, but which is sweeter and definitely is not very usable straight, either neat or on the rocks, IMHO, but makes some dynamite cocktails... half and half with a cucumber soda is phenomenal!) I have read reviews suggesting this mixes well with Lyre's Italian Spritz (Aperol) and Soda to make a nice NA-groni. I did not order any of the Spritz so I could not really say how well that works, but it may be worth considering.

We used this as a sweet vermouth in a couple of cocktails, and it did not disappoint! Complex flavors of sweet and mildly tart and then bitter gave the drinks exactly what we are looking for to wind down after a long day. Love it and will definitely be ordering more!