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!”