It can be sweet, like the Matthiasson blend, and, more familiarly, like the often innocuous products used in cocktails like the manhattan. It can be dry, like the kind you wave over the extra-dry martini (though for me, it’s not a martini without the vermouth).

In Europe, vermouths generally start with wormwood, an aromatic plant from which the word vermouth is said to have evolved. Like so many infused beverages, vermouth most likely started out as a palliative, meant to alleviate various ailments and physical imbalances.

Despite its unfounded notoriety as the mind-altering ingredient in absinthe, wormwood is not a hallucinogen, but it does stimulate the appetite and ease digestion. Mr. Matthiasson uses wormwood in his vermouths.

But Bianca Miraglia, whose New York company, Uncouth Vermouth, makes wonderfully idiosyncratic, militantly natural and local vermouths from ingredients she grows or forages, does not. She uses mugwort, a related plant also thought to help with digestion.

“Mugwort grows everywhere in New York,” she said, “and wormwood does not.”

While wormwood’s presence or lack thereof is much debated in vermouth circles, I’m not so concerned about it because Ms. Miraglia’s vermouths are so enticing.

She makes small batches ($35, 500 milliliters), using base wines primarily from the Red Hook Winery in Brooklyn. The character of each batch is determined by what she finds or grows. I’ve had Uncouth Vermouths made with beets and rhubarb, butternut squash and apple mint, which contains no apple at all but is a particularly fruity sort of mint.