Welcome, RTD Cocktail Club Members, to our very first installment! On the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month, we will be featuring a classic cocktail, sharing the story behind it, and bottling it along with three interesting variations for you to try and enjoy at home. This week, we take on the iconic Negroni.
History
As with most historical accounts the truth is debatable - especially when that history involves liquor, which many do. So, let’s start at a cafe in Milan in the 1860’s when Gaspare Campari had just remarried and relocated to Milan. He started two cafes and continued selling his soon-to-be famous aperitif. Here he was making the Milano-Torino Cocktail - a cocktail made of equal parts Campari, from Milan, and Punt e Mes, a sweet vermouth from Torino. At the beginning of prohibition, American tourists fled to Italy where they were still pouring the goodness and as you can imagine, our American ancestors liked things a little watered down (and before you take offense to that just look at our seltzer obsession). Fittingly, the Milano-Torino cocktail was eventually topped with soda water and garnished with a lemon wedge and renamed the Americano due to its popularity. Well, somewhere between 1917 and 1920 Count Camillo Negroni asked his bartender at the Cafe Casoni in Florence to sub out the soda water for something with a heavier punch….like gin. Gin is a perfectly solid replacement for water if you were wondering and especially in what is now known as the Negroni. There are huge holes in this story, however, including that the current Negroni family says Camillo didn’t exist but Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni did and that Pascal actually came up with the cocktail while in the French army in Senegal. However, Campari wasn’t invented until 1860 nor exported until 1904 which was halfway through Pascal’s deployment. Either way, that’s cocktail history. And we can see why someone would fight over having a cocktail named after them.
INGREDIENTS:
Gin, Campari, Sweet Vermouth
FLAVOR GLOSSARY:
Chinotto- a bitter and sour fruit from the Mediterranean no bigger than a golf ball.
Cascarilla- a tree bark native to the West Indies. The bark contains many of the same essential flavor compounds found in pine, eucalyptus, citrus, rosemary, cloves, thyme, savory, and black pepper.
Wormwood- Yep, this is the green fairy from absinthe parties that everyone talks about. No, it doesn’t make you hallucinate, those poets were just drunk. As a flavor, it is not the expected licorice or anise flavor you would assume from absinthe; it actually gives a mentholated bitterness. Wormwood is the key ingredient that differentiates vermouth from other fortified and aromatized wines.
Grains of Paradise- A member of the ginger family with pepper and cardamom notes. The small black seeds that come from a native West African plant were originally known for their medicinal properties, but like most medicine, it ended up being added to gin! (In this case we tinctured it and added it to the sweet vermouth to give the Coconut Gin a fun friend)
The Negroni is one of those special cocktails that works before and after dinner as well as without; but be careful with that one. Even Anthony Bourdain didn’t recommend more than two a day. A huge factor in the Negroni’s versatility is its herbal makeup - the gin with juniper (and ours with the grapefruit), the vermouth with wormwood, and the Campari with the secrets.
Let’s start with the secrets. Campari was created by Gaspare Campari in 1860. In 1904, Gaspare and his son, Davide, opened their first production plant under Davide’s management. They began to export the product and never looked back. The Campari recipe has been a secret since the beginning, but what we do know is that it's composed of around 60 herbs, spices, fruit peels, and tree barks. Two of those are assumed to be chinotto, a small bitter and sour Mediterranean fruit, and cascarilla, a bark from a tree native to the West Indies that contains a lot of the essential oils found in many other herbs and spices like pine, rosemary, eucalyptus, and black pepper.
If you’ve ever wondered why Campari is red that would be natural, or at least once was. Now it's artificially colored, but up until around 2005 they still used carmine. Carmine is a dye which comes from the cochineal, a bug! This bug has been harvested for over 2000 years by Central and South American natives to produce a bright red dye. That idea was obviously stolen and taken back to Europe. No one knows why, maybe it was their vegan market or the fact that some people go into anaphylactic shock with one sip, but the natural dye has been removed and replaced with artificial ingredients.
Recipes
THE CLASSIC:
Negroni
1 oz Bimini Gin
1 oz sweet vermouth (look for anything that mentions both Torino and Rosso)
1 oz Campari
Into your empty mixing glass, add 1oz of Bimini Gin, 1oz of sweet vermouth, and 1oz of Campari. Add ice. Stir for 20-30 seconds. Strain into chilled glass and garnish.
*Garnish: we have provided candied and dehydrated lemon wheels for aromatics, style, and as it rehydrates, a zesty touch. If making on your own you can use the peel from an orange, grapefruit or lemon as a “twist”*
*All cocktails can be served up (chilled, without ice, in a couple or martini glass) or on the rocks (over fresh ice in a rocks glass)*
VARIATIONS:
Coco-groni
1 oz Bimini Coconut Gin
1 oz Grains of Paradise Infused Italian Sweet Vermouth
1 oz Campari
Follow Classic Recipe directions
Bimini Blanc
1 oz Bimini Overproof Gin
1 oz Salers Gentian Liqueur (bitter herbal liquor flavored with a flower root)
1 oz French Blanc Vermouth de Chambery (Brand Names available in Maine: Comoz or Dolin)
Follow Classic Recipe directions
Old Pascal Pal
1.5 Bimini Barrel Reserve
.75 French Dry Vermouth de Chambery
.75 Wood Chip Smoked Campari
Pinch of Sea Salt
Follow Classic Recipe directions
How to Make It
First things first, mis en place, as the chefs say. I will get my tools together. Gather a jigger, a mixing glass, spoon, strainer, ice scoop, fruit peeler or pairing knife and the serving glass.
Now I will make sure I have Bimini gin, Campari, Italian sweet vermouth, and my garnish.
Next, I will fill my serving glass with ice and leave it there to chill while I craft my cocktail
Add all liquid ingredients to empty mixing glass
Add ice to mixing glass, fill to 1.5” from the rim of the mixing glass with ice
Stir cocktail with mixing spoon for 20 - 30 seconds
Place strainer over the mixing glass
Empty ice from chilling serving glass
Strain cocktail into serving glass
Drop dehydrated citrus on the top of the cocktail or shave the zest from the citrus, ‘spritz’ it over the top, and drop the garnish in
Now drink up! A cocktail should never get warm
PRO TIPS:
Consistency and control are really important with the Negroni. It only has three ingredients which may make it seem easy, but sometimes it's the most simple things that are not.
Tip 1: Always add your ice to your mixing glass LAST, all liquid ingredients first
Tip 2: Always, always chill your glass
Tip 3: If you can’t access Bimini or another high quality gin, add a pinch of sea salt to help balance
Tip 4: Equal part cocktails really need to be equal parts. Always measure your liquid for drink where every ingredient has the same measurement.
Tip 5: Click here to learn more about smoking your cocktails!
TOOLS AND TOOL SUBSTITUTIONS:
Mixing glass- Yarai Crystal Mixing Glass
Pint glass, wide mouth ball jar, large side of mixing tin, your largest coffee cup
Spoon- Cocktail Spoon (they have longer shafts which is better, I swear)
Gary Regan used his finger, a chopstick, a tablespoon
Ice scoop or Ice tongs
Measuring cup, serving spoon, or whatever you use to scoop your dog’s food with
Hawthorne or Julep Strainer
Wide slotted spoon, tea strainer, or nest a smaller glass into your mixing glass
