Vermouth is seldom the only project in progress. Miraglia may be reupholstering vintage furniture. Art is hung, moved, and sold. Chandeliers are put back together. Vermouth is the constant – even though the flavors are not.

Miraglia spent her “formative wine years” in the Oregon wine industry. She can’t trace her path from wine to vermouth, but wildflowers happened along the way. On an August afternoon, mounds of them have found their ways into a tub of hot skin-fermented Riesling from Red Hook Winery.

“The orange flowers in here are calendula, or marigold….We have seventeen plants going on in here.” says Miraglia, whose friends say that the vat is her cauldron, and that she is a potion-making witch. Far from the fairy tale world of witches who cast curses and boil poisons, Miraglia has to get Federal approval for each of her recipes. That takes time. So does the process of a blend becoming a balanced vermouth.