Mixing a Drink – The Negroni

The first “cocktail” I ever had was a hurricane that my cousin (now an awesome chef) made for the whole family during a reunion. This thing absolutely demolished anyone who drank it. I was 17 and had, probably, 4 oz and noped out.

After that, my experience for several years was basically making “highballs” in college. I would drink down something in a bottle and then filling it with booze. This was necessary when walking God-knows-where for parties in Bloomington in sub-freezing temps for most of the year. These were usually white rum and Coke or terrible flavored vodka and lemonade. I’m not proud (though today I do enjoy a good Cuba Libre now). So, needless to say, my first mixed drink experiences were not the most positive.

The first time I remember really loving a cocktail was the first negroni I ordered when I was studying in Florence. The guy who ran our school had recommended a small bar for aperitivo, and the guy at the bar recommended a negroni. My mouth wasn’t ready. A classic negroni is, I truly believe, one of the most unapologetic cocktails in existence.

To a kid who had been drinking bottom-shelf highballs for a few years, it was a whole new world. The negroni is equal parts of 3 equally-unapologetic ingredients: gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. Each on its own is an effective aperitif, and they combine to be a kind of super-gut-primer that I don’t fully understand the science of. I hadn’t, to my knowledge, really had any part of a negroni before besides bad gin. I probably mixed that bad gin with orange juice because I was not a smart kid when it came to booze. Combined in this way, in this atmosphere, with good food, I was in love.

Here’s how I’ve been making mine recently:

Negronis break all of the rules of cocktails that I otherwise try to follow: simple is better, focus on clean ingredients, always use something fresh, and probably don’t be a crazy neon color. Compared to something like a Tom Collins or daiquiri, both of which I also love, the negroni is obscene. That’s because all 3 ingredients are extremely complex amalgamations of flavors by themselves, and then they have to fight for dominance on your tongue.

Gin is basically vodka that’s had a bunch of stuff left in it for a long time, specifically juniper berries. You can make gin in your bathtub (which is the basis for a great bar in Seattle) if you want to, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Just use an empty bottle… This is why distilleries that eventually want to make whiskey usually make gin for a while first. Where barrels and space for aging whiskey are expensive, let alone the time you need to wait until it’s good, everything that goes into gin is pretty cheap. Lots of smaller operations basically buy their additives at a farmers market.

So gin, by virtue of how you make it, has a lot more going on than most other distilled spirits. Since you’re adding so many herbs and botanicals directly, you get a lot bigger flavors than you’ll get from aging whiskey in new white oak.

Vermouth is wine, which obviously has a lot going on already, that has more booze, herbs, sugar, botanicals, and other aromatics added to it. Since it’s Italian, sweet (or red) vermouth will often taste strongly or oregano by itself. I drink this stuff straight on ice frequently.

Campari is similar, but it’s just pure white spirit, water, and bitter things. It’s also always been made neon red intentionally (first with crushed insects) as a marketing gimmick. It’s almost undrinkable in bitterness on its own, but just dilute it with soda and you’re in business.  Aperol, of Aperol Spritz fame (on the back of a gargantuan marketing budget), is similar and made by the same company now. I don’t keep Aperol around because it’s lower in booze and won’t last in the cupboard – you need to refrigerate and consume the bottle in ~a month tops.

So, you take 3 different ingredients that are all complex things to start, with tons of ingredients individually, to create a bright-colored drink that smells and tastes almost offensive at first. Depending on the gin and vermouth you use there could easily be more than 100 ingredients in your glass. I’m not sure why I love this drink so much. Part of it, certainly, is the history I have with it. But I think the other part is that it tastes different every time.

Because there’s so much there, I always pick up on something different even if I’m using exactly the same vermouth and gin (which is rare). It’s also become a general base recipe that works well with substitutions – my wife loves a Boulvadier which switches in bourbon for the gin and adjusts the ratio a bit.

The negroni is a fascinating mix of fascinating things with a long history of its own. Truly a classic mixed drink