Philly’s first vermoutherie has a new pop-up bar and production space

As breweries, wineries, and distilleries have proliferated in Pennsylvania, Philadelphians increasingly enjoy an embarrassment of riches. Sure, there are high-quality whiskeys, skin-contact wines, and top-notch beers, but the selection has grown to include niche items once unimaginable at the local level: amaro, falernum, single-source rum, old tom gin, even an American take on absinthe.

In this bevy of booze, one complex spirit hasn’t been very well represented: vermouth, the cocktail-ingredient staple that’s made from sweetened, fortified wine infused with botanicals.

That’s changing now that Fell to Earth, the state’s first vermoutherie, is setting up shop in Philly after more than a year of build-up. Its East Falls production space is coming online, and it’s launching a month-long, twice-weekly pop-up bar in Headhouse Square in March.

Some Pennsylvania wineries do make vermouth — it’s a good way to use up wine, after all — but no local maker specialized in it until 2020, when longtime Philly wine expert Tim Kweeder and Bloomsday owner Zach Morris started making Dumpster Juice.

Kweeder was Bloomsday’s general manager even before it opened in 2019, when Morris, the former director of wine education for the Wine School of Philadelphia, started encouraging staff to experiment while waiting for the restaurant’s licensing to arrive.

“During the downtime, he had us do an exercise where we started working different botanicals into tinctures and teas, and then that turned into a small vermouth hobby,” Kweeder remembers.

When the pandemic hit and the state passed legislation allowing cocktails to-go, Kweeder and Morris seized the moment, making batches of vermouth from botanicals from Green Meadow Farms, local wine from the likes of Wayvine, honey, and brandy, and selling it as a cocktail in and of itself.

Production was small: The drink made its debut in 8-ounce plastic pouches and eventually graduated to hand-filled bottles and cans. Each batch sold out in no time, earning notice not only from Inquirer critic Craig LaBan but national outlets like Food & Wine and Wine Enthusiast.

Since then, Morris and Kweeder have expanded their ambitions. They established the Fell to Earth label in 2022, after the state’s cocktails to-go legislation lapsed, bringing Dumpster Juice to a halt. They eyed up a warehouse in South Philly before signing a lease on the former Capogiro plant off Henry Avenue, near the Queen Lane reservoir. In the meantime they made more vermouth at Lancaster County’s Vox Vineti winery, where owner Ed Lazzerini kept Kweeder and Morris supplied with good wine. (In that arrangement, they could also sell Fell to Earth under Vox Vineti’s license.)

“For the longest time we were doing a three-hour round trip commute to work on larger batches of vermouth at his facility until we were finally licensed,” Kweeder said.

Now that its license is in and it’s moved into the East Falls space, Fell to Earth can begin growing in earnest. Kweeder has stepped down from Bloomsday and is turning his focus to the vermoutherie, which he co-owns with Morris’ wife, Jocelyn. He’ll be running a twice-weekly, one-man show vermouth bar pop-up all March at Bodhi Coffee (410 S. Second St.), just steps from Bloomsday on Headhouse Square.

Hours will be 5 to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Kweeder will be serving up vermouth on the rocks, in flights, and mixed up in cocktails. Charcuterie and other snacks from chef Andrew Wood (formerly of Russet, now of Le Virtu) and chef Palmer Marinelli will be on offer. Expect it to be crowded: “Technically there’s like three bar stools and five tables,” Kweeder said. “If we’re lucky, the weather’ll be nice and we can put one table outside.”

Besides its own sweet, dry, and rosé vermouths, Fell to Earth plans to make more Dumpster Juice releases, plus a more affordable vermouth that Kweeder hopes to market as a “well” or “rail” vermouth.

Fell to Earth sources as much from Pennsylvania as possible: The wine is typically from Vox Vineti or Galen Glen, and the botanicals are from Green Meadow, Penn Herb Co., and New Jersey citrus farm Flavors by Bhumi. They use house-made caramel and occasionally local honey to sweeten their vermouth and bulk brandy to fortify it.

“It was a lot of trial and error over the years, but at this point we basically blend the ingredients together. At most they might sit there for two weeks, but our dry [vermouth] is pretty much ready within a week,” Kweeder said. “Ideally I’d like to let them settle and kind of come into their own, but they’ve been pretty well-received by the people that have been meeting with us and tasting, so we don’t have the luxury of laying them down.”

While aging is still a ways off, Kweeder and Morris are already thinking of the future. The East Falls space isn’t ideal for a tasting room — it’s on the second floor of the former Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania — so they’re looking for other potential homes that are more public-facing.

“I’ve opened a restaurant before and invested in that, I learned a lot from that,” Kweeder said. “I feel a lot better about the direction this is going.”