The essence of a Negroni should never be questioned. A bitter part, which is given by the bitter; another sweet, which is helped by vermouth; and, finally, a distillate like gin, which gives it complexity and structure. “Its diffusion and longevity lies in the simplicity of the recipe, with the same proportions, and the musicality of the name,” says Luca Picchi, author of the most ambitious biography that has been written about this cocktail, born in his city, Florence. “Easy to prepare, easy to remember and easy to order by pronouncing it in any language,” he says.
Although as he well remembers in his book, Negroni Cocktail: An Italian legend (Giunti, 2015), the original recipe, created one day in 1919 or 1920 (there is not much more information) by the bartender Fosco Scarselli for Count Camillo Negroni, wore a coup de seltzer, widely used at that time. “In those years, the most popular Italian cocktail was the Americano, which was made in a glass called campanella and it had vermouth (about 40 ml) and Campari (about 20 ml) and a splash of seltzer (about 40 ml),” he says via email. “When Camillo Negroni suggested a new formula to the bartender, whispering in his ear to reduce the amount of seltzer and added a part of gin, the famous Negroni was born.”
Today the cocktail has managed to become popular thanks to all kinds of bartenders who recommend it, also through viral videos where you can see influencers or actors like Stanley Tucci prepare it, and, something that should not be forgotten, because the quality of its ingredients has improved. “In the last 20 years, gin, vermouth and, even to a lesser extent, bitters“They have experienced a radical revolution,” highlights Picchi, who works behind the bar at the Gilli café, one of the legendary Florentine cafés, very close to the original place where the count went to drink, the Caffè Casoni. This year that space was reopened under the name of Giacosa1815 —which was how the first café that was in that place was known. Among the different Negronis that you can try there, there is a Seltz Negroni, with Monkey 47 gin, Punt E Mes, Campari and seltzer; a shaker-shaken negroni, which they call Shakerato, is served in a cocktail glass and made with Turin gin, Seven Hills, Carpano Antica Formula and Campari; or its more classic Negroni, with Porter’s Classic, Mancino Vermouth and Campari, slightly increasing the amount of the latter.
The variations of a Negroni are endless. “Like many classics, it is a cocktail that is designed to be twisted. That is, change,” says Picchi, who has among his favorite Negroni one that replaces gin with mezcal and adds 10 ml of Varnelli coffee liqueur. “For me, the concept of variation is broad, but it must necessarily remember, in some way, the original recipe. It should be recognizable at the first sip.” Salvatore Calabrese, 68 years old, one of the greatest eminences of mixology worldwide, in charge of prestigious London bars such as Dukes, Playboy and Urban, tells how he created one of his most replicated versions: “The Negroni I invented Svegliato in 2012, when I opened my cocktail bar at The Cromwell hotel in Las Vegas. The idea came to me while I was drinking my coffee, I wanted to create a cocktail that had a base of this and was elegant.” To do this he replaced the water in an Italian coffee maker with vermouth, “the aroma of cinnamon, cloves and all the spices normally found in vermouth passed through the coffee.”
Calabrese’s memories travel back to the late sixties, when between the ages of 11 and 15 he served in a small bar in his city during the summers. “The Negroni had a big impact on me when I started working in hospitality. “My boss at the time, Mr. Raffaello, taught me a lot of things, including how to make a simple Americano long before I learned to master cocktails,” he notes. That decade, and the previous one, served to expand the Negroni, which was quickly recognized internationally. For example, James Bond visits Rome and its hotels, the Excelsior and the Colomba d’Oro, where he meets double agent Aris Kristatos, and orders: “A Negroni. With Gordon’s, please.” Ian Fleming narrates it in the story Risiko, included in For your eyespublished in 1960. Another writer who enjoys putting his characters in front of a negroni is Tennessee Williams, in Mrs. Stone’s Roman Springmade into a film in 1961, its protagonist drinks a Negroni in a nightclub.
That Rome, the one immortalized in films like Holidays in Rome either The Sweet Life, will be the best ambassador of the Negroni. Also her bartenders, like Victor Tombolini, who was behind the Open Gate, Victor’s Bar or Club 84; Valentino Clementi, at Caffè Rosati; Lotti Wall, in the Gran Hotel Roma; or Raimondo, in the aforementioned Excelsior, where it is said that he gave life to the Cardinale, one of the most popular variations of the Negroni, changing the red vermouth for dry vermouth.
For Robert Simonson, responsible for some of the best cocktail treatises ever written, author of the recent The Encyclopedia of Cocktails: The People, Bars & Drinks, with More Than 100 Recipes (Ten Speed, 2023), it has been the waiters who have managed to position the Negroni as one of the great classics of the present. “In the 2000s, bartenders promoted drinks they liked and thought were underrated. Among these were gin, vermouth and Italian bitters and amaros,” he reflects. “The Negroni contains all three. So when serving Negronis, the bartenders They transmitted to their customers three products that they loved and respected.” Simonson also gives them an important place in his work of evangelization and appreciation of bitter flavors. “Almost all the cocktails and drinks we enjoy today are because a group of bartenders They decided, ten or twenty years ago, to defend and serve them more. Let’s not let Campari tell us that they were the ones who made the Negroni popular,” concludes the New York Times drinks and cocktails prescriber.
“With a lot more gin.” That’s how Ivy Mix likes to drink it, the visible face of cocktail bars like Leyenda and Fiasco, both in Brooklyn, which recommends a gin from San Francisco, Junípero. “I think the best Negroni I ever had was at the old Nomad in Manhattan. Leo Robitscheck was the one who made the cocktails. If you were lucky enough to have him prepare it in a special way, you will know what I am talking about,” he recalls from Sydney, where he is a guest mixologist. Maroš Dzurus, owner of Himkok, the tiny Oslo bar that this week experienced the biggest rise on The World’s 50 Best Bars list, going from position 43 to 10, says that he likes to make it with his own gin, a local wine made from strawberry and rhubarb, Anikonik, and a non-alcoholic vermouth. “This Negroni is somewhat of a beginner’s Negroni because he is a great option for those trying it for the first time,” he describes. In Spain, Sips, which has just emerged as the best bar in the world on this list, makes its Negroni with bergamot and ice that does not melt; while the Madrid-based Salmon Guru, which has risen to 16th place in the 50 Best ranking, opts for resting its own in barrels and seasoning it with amontillado and port.
This year, as has been customary for a decade, Magazine Drinks International, one of the most prominent in the spirits sector, made its renowned list of the most consumed cocktails worldwide. To put it together, they ask one hundred bars in 33 countries for their ten most popular classic cocktails, included in the main lists in the sector, such as Tales of The Cocktail, 50 Best Bars and some more. And by second consecutive year, the Negroni was placed on the podium. “This quintessentially Italian appetizer has become ubiquitous in recent times, and with good reason,” wrote journalist Clinton Cawood. “It is definitely a golden age for the Negroni,” says David Wondrich, the most relevant historian of the cocktail universe, editor of The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails (Oxford University Press, 2021), the bible of good drinking. “It is simple and complex at the same time, and yet it is refreshing.” Philip J. Greene, another spirit institution, author of two of the works that best document the decade in which the Negroni appeared, thinks the same: A Drinkable Feast (Tarcher Perigee, 2018) and To Have and Have Another (2015, Tarcher Perigee). “Fifteen years ago, when I discovered this drink, it was not very common to see it, but that has certainly changed,” he points out. “My dear friend Gary Regan [que falleció en 2019 y dejó escrito The Negroni: Drinking to La Dolce Vita, with Recipes & Lore (Ten Speed, 2015)] He had fun making a ‘Finger Stirred Negroni’ at places like Dead Rabbit. Something that gave a lot of attention to the drink.”
One of the latest books about the Negroni and its history, The Negroni: A Love Affair with a Classic Cocktail (2021, Artisan), is written by luxury journalist Matt Hranek. His vision, removed from the sometimes reduced ecosystem of bars, is also very instructive: “It has become a mascot drink within the world of men’s style,” he says somewhat pejoratively. A Negroni to pretend or a negroni to drink, the die is cast in the century of social networks.
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