At the wind whips at us with its chill flails, the blus­tery wet driz­zle envelops our heads as we per­aum­bu­late along the streets of down­town, as the night glows into the dawn with a dull damp vio­let cloud — we’re gonna need a drink to ward off the mis­ery of the sea­son. So I present to you the mulled-wine of the cock­tail fam­i­ly: The Negroni.

It seems there are not a lot of peo­ple who will admit to a fond­ness for Cam­pari. Indeed it was not two nights ago that a drink­ing com­pan­ion of mine brayed some­thing inco­her­ent about “ear­wax” when the dread­ed C‑word was men­tioned dur­ing a free-rang­ing ses­sion over at mine. How­ev­er, for all its per­ceived sins, with­out Cam­pari you would not have a Negroni.

It is the Cam­pari that is the med­i­c­i­nal “bit­ter” and pro­vides the char­ac­ter­is­tic fla­vor of the Negroni. A lit­tle back­ground: accord­ing to my sources, Com­pari was con­coct­ed by Gas­pare Cam­pari in the 1850s. Gas­pare, at only age 14, was the mas­ter drink mak­er at the Bass Bar in Turin, which was the com­mer­cial cen­ter for aper­i­tifs at the time. Cam­pari is made with nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents that include herbs, spices, bark and fruit peels. The exact for­mu­la is of course a high­ly guard­ed secret. And as far as the Negroni is con­cerned, as with all great cock­tails sto­ries dif­fer, but the most pop­u­lar account of its ori­gin is that Count Camil­lo Negroni, a Flo­ren­tine aris­to­crat, decid­ed one day to add some bite to his favorite drink, the Amer­i­cano. He had the bar­tender add gin. From that time on he ordered the same drink every day. Even­tu­al­ly the bar­tender named the drink after him.

The Negroni. Com­plex. Spicy. Bit­ter, although not over­ly so. The tini­est bit of sweet­ness to off­set that. It’s a drink to warm a cold breast. It’s a per­fect aper­i­tif, a drink to wake up your taste buds and shout “Ciao, ragaz­zo bel­lo! Come stai?”. And the colour! The rich brown and deep red tones seem to glow with soft light and autum­nal hues. Hold one near a light and your Negroni will erupt in orange novas. It’s the obvi­ous drink-of-Autumn for a Welling­ton­ista.

“Bene, gra­zie!”

So to a recipe. Your clas­sic Negroni will con­sist of — and only of — equal parts Cam­pari, sweet red ver­mouth (Mar­ti­ni Rossi), and gin (any vari­ety of Tan­querey would be my pref­er­ence, OR for slight vari­a­tion King William’s Lemon Gene­va style gin from Puran­gi Estate, Mer­cury Bay). Mix (stir, for god’s sake, stir!) in a tum­bler with plen­ty of ice, and serve in a chilled cock­tail glass with a twist of orange and some flambéd orange-peel oil across the top of the drink.

Prop­er­ly made, the sweet­ness of the ver­mouth will per­fect­ly bal­ance out the astrin­gency of the gin and the bit­ter­ness of the Cam­pari. A spe­cial ver­sion of this drink dou­bles the amount of Cam­pari and adds two dash­es of orange bit­ters (Fee’s or Regans’) — it works beau­ti­ful­ly, and wakes up the tongue even more. And for an extra-spe­cial drink, use a Carpano’s Punt E Mes or Anti­ca For­mu­la, two top-shelf sweet ver­mouths that add a won­der­ful lay­er of spice. Anoth­er vari­ant involv­ing Dubon­net exists, but why taint our col­lec­tive palate in that way?

Final­ly, as we must pro­vide suc­cour to the weary, wind-blown Welling­ton­istas, from whence can one obtain a superla­tive Negroni? My vote goes to Motel, where I have always been served Negro­nis of utter­ly sub­lime con­coc­tion (actu­al­ly I have nev­er, ever, ever had a bad cock­tail made there). I can quite imag­ine, giv­en the quin­tes­sen­tial Ital­ian nature of the drink, that Boulot and Sco­pa may be relied upon to fur­nish one with a Negroni of impec­ca­ble char­ac­ter. Oth­ers may wish to add their own rec­om­men­da­tions.

A source:
Negroni, Put­tanesca: Heav­en on earth

EDIT
I can’t believe I omit­ted to men­tion: and SO quaf­fa­ble, too.