A favorite cocktail of mine is the formidable Negroni. You'll see it created with a most unorthodox method in our next Slate video, coming soon. My preferred recipe is after the jump.
Campari gives the drink most of its signature color and bitterness, but if you look at the label of the current Campari bottle, it makes no mention of the storied cocktail. Instead, it offers a recipe for the fascinating-sounding Campari On the Rocks. It has two ingredients, Campari and ice, and unironically walks you through the process of combining them. If that doesn't insult you enough, try the other recipes on the bottle:There's Campari Orange, which is, yes, Campari and OJ. Or perhaps you'll dare to attempt mixing the Campari and Soda, which has a whopping two ingredients. Not since Rachael Ray revealed the secrets of how to microwave bacon have I been so effectively reminded of how unskilled marketers must think we are. (By the way, many of the snarky comments on the Ray recipe are Three Wolf Moon great.) Moving on, here's the way I prefer to make a Negroni:
2 parts gin
2 parts sweet vermouth
2 parts Campari Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Or make it on the rocks with a splash of soda if you like. You can garnish with an orange peel, but I never bother.
2 parts sweet vermouth
2 parts Campari Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Or make it on the rocks with a splash of soda if you like. You can garnish with an orange peel, but I never bother.
Folks fiddle with the proportions, but those are the traditional ingredients. At Lincoln Ristorante in New York, they're working to enter new territory. They have a Negroni Bar, where you can choose from 15 possible ingredients for the three components, available up, rocks, or sparkling with Prosecco. Sadly, one of the options is a flavored vodka. That's pretty appalling, but the other 300 possible variations would be tasty. But I think only one of them is truly a Negroni, even if Campari thinks it's too hard to make. /mark
Photo: Flickr CC / tomhilton
