There’s something very comforting about the idea of being able to find Vermouth on tap in a bar two minutes walk from my piso. Originally I thought it would be non-essential for my life in Barcelona, but this standing room only, elbows tucked in kind of bar is a shabby, hospitable place where locals dawdle over their olives, manchego and slices of sausage. It gets under your skin in its own unpretentious way. A definite improvement from eight years ago when the bar, admittedly under previous ownership, was patronized almost solely by members of Mossos (the Catalan police), the Guardia Civil and a smattering of paranoid alcoholics. Open at lunchtimes and in the evenings, vermut (or vermouth) is my idea of a quick constitutional before going on to something more substantial. And judging by the number of people spilling out onto the road outside Cala de Vermut, I am not alone in this thinking.