In praise of the Negroni
It’s Negroni Week so I’m posting a little something I wrote on a cocktail that’s almost impossible to get wrong.
Things can get confusing when you add alcohol as the origin story of the Negroni attests. It’s invention is usually attributed to Count Camillo Negroni who in the 1920s walked into the Café Casoni in Florence and asked for a Milano-Torino, a mixture of Campari and Martini vermouth, but with a kick. So the waiter Forsco Scarselli added gin instead of a spritz of soda and thus a classic was born. But in recent years drinks this neat explanation has been called into question. Apparently Count Camillo wasn’t a real count and the drink was actually invented by a Frenchman!
It’s easier to recall the moment I had my first Negroni. It was made for me by my Uncle Peter, he wasn’t a real uncle, he was my aunt’s boyfriend. The first time I met him I was out of breath from climbing all the stairs up to his bachelor flat in Marylebone. With a smile, he handed me a livid red drink and explained that it was called a Negroni. I don’t think I had ever drunk anything that was simultaneously so strong, sweet and bitter all at the same time. A mixture of three botanical drinks, vermouth, gin and Campari, the Negroni is one of those drinks that sounds like it really shouldn’t work. The late chef Anthony Bourdain described the flavour as a “sinister yet lovely and inspired hell broth.”
It was the start of a beautiful friendship with Uncle Peter and the Negroni. At the time, in the mid-noughties, it was a cult drink ordered only by the cognoscenti. But a few years later the Negroni was everywhere. Now there’s a week devoted to it and it’s even being used as an insult by a presenter on GB News when he referred to the ‘is the pompous, woke, negroni swilling establishment media elite…’ Cue a dozen editorials saying that the ‘Negroni isn’t woke’, or ‘I’m proud to be part of woke negroni-swilling media establishment’ etc.
Part of the appeal is that it’s almost impossible to get wrong. There’s even a Negroni Sbagliato, meaning ‘wrong’, where the gin is substituted for Prosecco. Perfect if you have to operate heavy machinery after one, you really shouldn’t attempt anything after a traditional Negroni. Then there are white Negronis using bianco vermouth and clear bitter liquids like Suze. Perhaps the only thing you really shouldn’t do is shake a Negroni as Stanley Tucci did in his Youtube video or it will go cloudy. He also advises against Martini Rosso. Wrong!
In fact the most basic model that Uncle Peter made using Beefeater gin, Martini Rosso vermouth and Campari is hard to beat. Stir equal parts with ice, drop in a slice of orange and then sit back and slowly sip your heavenly concoction. And then maybe have another, but never more than two.
The vermouth is the key ingredient and I find the drink much improved if you invest in something more expensive - like cocchi di Torino. Crumbs Negroni week is so lame. What on earth is wrong with people that everything has to be reduced to such a naf state of affairs, as if it’s promulgation by Instagram menswear influencers hasn’t done enough to ruin such a fine drink which once felt like a cognoscenti’s choice as you say (I remember having my first as a jejeune university student) but the coin of the realm has been much debased...
Bravo Henry. The spiritual purity of the Negroni must be preserved . Nefarious adulterations from the likes of Mr. Tucci should be soundly rebuffed.