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!”