It’s anyone’s guess which sort of isolation triggers more drinking — pandemics or the morte blanco that hit the other week and blew out all out the water mains (ahem, manes). Still, fluffy snow lacks the element of fear of a first-rate plague, so it’s a different kind of drinking. I sat at my desk ghostwriting a comedy, looking out my window at the soft, muffled landscape and pretending that I was writing my own damn comedy in some place like Gstaad. Granted, it would have had to have been a very flat part of Gstaad, but if you are going to sit around visualizing some swank ski resort during a travel ban, you’d better start drinking like it.
So it was then that I found myself drinking what, if social media is to be believed, must be the trendiest cocktail in the known universe. According to the Drinks International website, it’s been the second most popular cocktail in the world for five years running, with an Instagram hashtag of over half a million posts. It does make a pretty picture. A book dedicated to that single drink has just come out. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the Negroni.
Richard Murff
The Negroni
Ehhh … it’s all right. It’s popular at any rate.
According to legend, an Italian count (of course) Camillo Negroni was sitting at the Bar Casoni in Florence, drinking an Americano — made with vermouth, Campari, and club soda — and he decided that he needed something un pó stronger. I reckon the count was having a bad day, so he asked the bartender to swap out the club soda for gin. I’ve met a few countesses over the course of my career, and the last one I had lunch with didn’t appear capable of having a bad day. You never can tell.
Well, it’s a great story and also a good make-it-at-home cocktail because you really can’t mess up the construction: equal parts gin, sweet (or red) vermouth, Campari, and garnish with either an orange or lemon peel. That’s it.
Honestly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Normally if I’d made a drink with so much global hype and it came out tasting like this, I’d have assumed I’d just done it wrong. But you really can’t screw it up. This is just the way a Negroni tastes. It’s hard to explain, especially for someone who’s never had much vermouth rosso or Campari. Although I’m an old hand with gin.
Despite looking like a liquified Jolly Rancher, the Campari is actually pretty bitter. Not viciously so, but it was the first thing that hit me. Littlebit took a snort and handed it back to me, shaking her head. For her part, what Mrs. M picked up was the sweetness of the vermouth russo, and she isn’t wrong either. Perhaps those dueling elements may be that secret to the Negroni’s phenomenal success — other than the fact that Instagram is largely an atomic bandwagon.
The Negroni’s combination of bitter and sweet can be refreshing, and being as light as it is, it lingers on the palate well. Without the use of simple syrup, what sweetness that it has doesn’t cling.
I’ll admit that sometimes I just can’t tell why some things are popular, but the Negroni certainly is, and I can only hope that it’s not just a social media bandwagon at work here. Like Game of Thrones, I can see the appeal even if I’m not into it. Being a professional, I waited for the visions of Switzerland to melt away and transform completely into a 70-degree spring day — about 30 hours — and had another after making ice from boiled water. Again, it was the bitterness that jumped out, but once you know exactly what the hell you are in for, it lacks that slap of betrayal that the first one gives you.
