Latest / Into The Barchive / The Negroni: From Italian Legend to Happy Accident
Transcript
- ITB: To the bark where the past comes alive. Tales Let them Dive. Welcome to the Barkive. Hello, Barkivists, and welcome back to Into the Barkive. The podcast where we dive deep into the stories, peoples, and cocktails that have shaped the way we drink. I'm Tim Wright, mixologist, your above-average curious drinker, and your slightly tipsy tour guy through Boo's history. And I'm Dr. Blake Jones, historian, mixologist, and certified specialist of spirits, here to pour out the stories behind what's in your glass. Now, whether you're a bartender, a spirits enthusiast, or simply someone who's curious to why one particular ruby red cocktail has become the unofficial handshake across cocktail bars around the world, we're glad that you're here. Today we're exploring a drink that somehow both over a century old. And still and still feels completely modern. The Nagrini. Three ingredients equal parts of gin, sweet vermouth, and compari. That's it. Yet those three ingredients have inspired thousands of variations, an entire charitable fundraising week, countless pieces of cocktail glassware, and probably more Instagram photos than. Any stirred drink outside of the martini. True, true. And it's also one of those drinks that almost every bartender remembers learning to appreciate. Very few love their first Negroni. I mean, it's bitter, it's herbal, it's sweet without being sugary, it's spirit forward without hiding behind citrus. The first sip could be almost confrontational. And then somewhere around the fourth or the fifth negrini. Maybe spread across several months, you suddenly understand why generations of Italians have been drinking bitter ⁓ apertifs before dinner. So today we're going to make that classic Negroni. Yeah, and we're gonna trace its surprisingly murky history back to Florence, separate fact from legend, and talk about why this cocktail has become the defining drink of the modern cocktail renaissance. Then later in the episode we'll intentionally Make a mistake. Yeah, one of the greatest mistakes in cocktail history. And what is that? The Nagruni Spagliato. So grab yourself a mixing glass, a bottle of gin, and a bottle of sparkling wine, and let's get into the barkheid. The Negroni, our Equal Parts Cocktail. So from our previous episode, you would have started with our compare and our Torino Vermouth, making our Molano Torino. In this one, we're gonna go one ounce of compare into our stirring glass. Next, one ounce of our Antica formula? And if we would have stopped there, we have our Milano Torino. But on this one, again, it's equal parts cocktail, one ounce of gin. Here, we'll use a little bit of a tankere. And now we stir. Again, the predecessor mean that Milano and Trino, but the superstar child that has taken over as a global phenomenon is the Negroni. Just by simply adding another equal parts of a gym has made this thing pop and go worldwide. Stir this for 30 to 45 seconds until it is chilled. And then your preference on this one is completely up to you. You can use loose ice, spent ice, or much like we did for our original, might as well make it a little sexy, and use a clear cube. Straight into our glass. And then garnish with a half spoon of an orange. And here we have our Negroni. For our second cocktail, we're going to make the Negruni Spagliato. Or the Mistaken Negruni, because that's what a spagliato is. So I'm gonna build this in glass. I'm gonna put a large format ice cube in a rock's glass. And then I'm going to do the exact same build with one exception. So first we're gonna start with that Milano Torino build. So one ounce of the Campari from Milan. And we're gonna pour that off to the side to begin with, let that ice cube have a little more time to temper at the top. Then we're going to take an ounce of our turin, that sweet vermouth, the Carpano Antica formula, and grab an ounce of that. Again, kind of pour off the ice to begin, Lou. And so you could build this in a mixing glass as well, but I'm gonna just keep it simple and stir this together. inside my rocks glass and give it a good little stir and get those ingredients incorporated. And then part of what makes the spagliato, the spagliato is again a replacement of one ingredient. So where the Negroni replaces the club soda with ⁓ London Dry Gin, the Negruni Spagliato, the mistaken Negruni, replaces the gin with sparkling wine. Now traditionally, of course, because this is an Italian-based drink, you'd use Prosecco. But I've got a nice French sparkling wine here we're going to use instead. And so I'm going to measure out one ounce. So we're still keeping that equal parts ⁓ proportions along the way for our Negrini spagliato. And then pour that in. add some effervescence to the cocktail and then just to make sure it's ⁓ combined kind of just move the ice around make sure that sparkling wine gets underneath and then we will add ourselves a orange wheel or half wheel and get our Negroni spagliato cheers. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. The history of the Negroni. From where does the Negroni come? Well, the Negroni's story actually begins with another cocktail we covered in our last episode, the Milano Torino. Correct. You know, equal parts Kimparia from Milan and Sweet Vermouth from Turin. Then someone had the bright idea to add soda water. Mm-hmm. And we get the Americano, right? The Milano Torino now becomes the Americano. Lighter, more refreshing, perfect for warm afternoons, right? And if that progression sounds familiar, it should. Yeah, because today's drink is essentially one more evolutionary step. Milano Torino, Americano, Negruni. Three generations of the same cocktail family. Rather than adding the soda for bubbles, we're substituting in that gin, right? The drink became stronger, drier, and I would say much more air aromatic. And it also reflected changing tastes in Europe during the early 20th century, when London dry gin had become f more fashionable across the continent. That makes sense now. Talking about that timing. Yeah, and so now we come to the story that ⁓ many cocktail enthusiasts have heard. Around 1919, an Italian nobleman named Count Camillo Negroni walks into Cafe Cassoni in Florence. He's a regular. He orders an Americano, but this time he asks the bartender to make it stronger. Instead of topping the drink with soda water. The bartender replaces it with gin. I mean, that's one hell of a difference. Yeah, I mean, it r he wanted stronger, boom, he got it. And then, you know, you can we did orange slices in ours, but ⁓ an orange peel isn't out of place in a negrini either. And that's according to legend, what was in the original negruni. Correct. Now we have customers coming in and asking. For the Count's drink, right by name. Eventually it becomes simply known as the Negroni for Count Negroni. And it's elegant. It's memorable. It's exactly that kind of cocktail that every cocktail story lover loves, right? They enjoy hearing, repeating itself. And parts of it may very well be true. But historians have learned to approach origin stories with a healthy dose of skepticism because the people who were there were drawn. Always. And many classic cocktails have neat, tidy invention stories that typically only appear decades after the fact. I'm going to think you're pulling up a reference novel now. Yes, so the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails notes that while the Count Camillo Negroni narrative has become the accepted tradition, the documentary evidence from the period is surprisingly limited. The drink likely emerged in Florence around the end of the nineteen teens or beginning of the nineteen twenties, but the precise circumstances remain difficult to verify. Rather than a single flash of inspiration, it may have been the natural evolution of the already popular Americano adapted to the growing popularity of gin in Italy. And I I think that's something that I love about cocktail history. Sometimes the myths tell ⁓ tell us much about the facts, maybe even more about the facts, but whether or not Count Camillo personally ordered this thing, or he was the one that actually ordered the first Negroni, the legend kind of helps describe it and makes it part of the story, reflecting something bigger than what it is, right? Yeah, and I mean one of it's the timeless truth that regulars have relationships with bartenders. And recipes evolved through conversation. A favorite drink might be tweaked based on a guest preference. Yeah, great cocktails were not always invented in a laboratory, right? By some kind of great mind. Sometimes they were just silly happenstance. Yeah, and again, whether it's a lab or like cocktail competitions where someone's you know spent weeks researching and workshopping a cocktail sometimes that just emerges across the bar top. Just one request at a time. Absolutely. Thing you know, you ask for your usual and then one day you say, can you make it a little stronger? Or what if we tried this instead? Hey, peaches are in season now instead of strawberries, right? Yeah. And sometimes that's all it takes to create something that sticks. ⁓ as we start to break down some of our cocktails, we talked about the the Milano Torino. Let's actually talk about the ingredients in the Negroni, right? Break those down again. So this is a cocktail where one sp isn't a cocktail where one spirit dominates and the others are just like background players. The Negroni works because it's built like a three-legged stool. If you remove or weaken one leg, the whole thing collapses. Okay. So let's start with the gym. Okay. Gin is not an Italian spirit. No. You mentioned that it was 1911-ish, right? And the European flavor profile. It it's changing. Yep. ⁓ but by the early 20th century, ⁓ London dried gin has become popular throughout Europe. Imported British spirits carrying a certain cosmopolitan appeal, particularly among the upper and middle classes in Italy. So now adding gin to that Americano. Yeah, it it's doing more than increasing the alcohol content. It's bringing an entirely new botanical dimension. Juniper, coriander, angelica, citrus peel, all of these botanicals ⁓ interact with the herbs that are already present in the Camparian, the vermouth. I heard one person say, think about like this. Even though this is a three-ingredient cocktail. When you think about all the herbs, botanicals, and spices that are in gin, campurri, ⁓ yeah, and vermouth they all bring their own, ⁓ huh. Is that you might be talking about a drink that has like dozens upon dozens of ingredients in it. Each if you take each herb and spice and think that musical reference that I did before, right? There is it's a symphony. Each individual instrument playing different parts. But making into one beautiful, elegant thing masterpiece. Yeah. And if we move on to like the compari, you know, like compari is pretty assertive. Yes. at assertive at the is a is a pleasant way of putting it for most novices. Yes. And the sweet vermouth on its own, it's rich and wine-like. So what the gin is doing is piercing some of those flavors with botanicals. So in And so just becoming louder, it's creating this harmony you're describing. So even though the math doesn't seem like it should work, it it works beautifully. Again, going to music out. There's reasons that the monished tones, chords, make beautiful music because eventually they come to a resolution. And that's what this three-stooled drink does. So if the gin provides that like Alcoholic backbone and structure. Yep. The Cempuri provides the identity. Okay. Right? It provides it the signature red hue. I see that. With and without Cempuri, it's not an agroni. That's true. So Gaspari Campuri introduced this his bitter aperitivo in the 1860s. It becomes part of Milan's cafe culture. And again, we don't know all of its ingredients other Then it's a blend of herbs, spices, aromatic plants, and fruit infused into alcohol. It's really unlike anything else. Campuri is one of those bottles that almost every bartender has a story about. I'm sure you had the same experience, but when you watch ⁓ people taste Campuri for the first time, their reaction normally is immediate. I mean, not Malore, but But sometimes they smile, sometimes they make that face, right? That bitter face. Sometimes it's both. Because bitterness isn't something that most people like that they're conditioned to enjoy. Go back to the t tongue, right? Yeah. Evolutionarily speaking, bitterness often signals danger, right? Many poisonous plants taste bitter, so human beings developed an instinctive caution toward that flavor. Yet cultures around the world have repeatedly embraced bitterness. Think espresso, dark chocolate, hoppy beers. The Negroni just wants you to, you know, kind of slow down. They all have their own patience, but the Negroni is just saying, Hey, be here with me in this moment. Yeah, the bitterness it it's not a drinker likely going to just crush. No. Because of the bitter flavor, it it's meant to have the conversation. It isn't meant to disappear in like ten minutes. Absolutely. I mean, challenge's accepted, but it's not meant to. Yes. It's a conversational cocktail. Yeah. And then that takes us to the third and final ingredient, the sweet vermouth. The one that perhaps people underestimate the most. And then you know, people may think of vermouth as just a mixer, but in many ways it's kind of backwards. Like historically, vermouth was a celebrated aromatized wine long before many cocktails existed. and vermouth producers from Turin by the late 19th century were exporting bottles around the world, right? Yeah. I mean it As you mentioned before, it became like a staple. Yes. In the previous episode. It was everywhere. It was part of that ⁓ aperitibo ⁓ culture. Like just vermouth on its own. Mm-hmm. And I mean, I guess the important lesson we always teach in our cocktail classes about vermouth is fresh vermouth matters. Again, not the dusty thing that's been sitting on grandma or your great aunt's ⁓ Bar cart are in the closet, it needs to be refrigerated, treated with care. Yeah, and if your Negruni tastes off, nine times out of ten, it's the vermouth that has spoiled because it's been sitting on the back bar for six months. So just remembering vermouth is wine. So once you open it, put it in the fridge, and you'll be amazed at how much brighter your cocktails will become. Yeah, drink it from both within two to three months. As you can see, we're using a 375 milliliter bottle. We're using a Corbin pivot, even on a bottle that we'll probably finish within, I would say, the next two to four weeks. But being very intentional to make sure that we try to preserve it as much as possible. Yep. So I guess from the ingredients, now let's talk about the the recipe, the proportions. Eagle parts ratio on this one. So there's One thing that you ⁓ have to love about this, it's really hard to screw this one up, especially as a beginner. Tell them equal parts. You don't have a a jigger to measure one ounce, one ounce, one ounce. You may have another measuring device or vessel at your house and go a cup, a cup, a cup, or a lid, a lid, a lid, right? Just as long as it's equal amounts, you can't really mess this bad boy up. Yeah. And but Other bartenders who have made plenty of negrunies would say, you know, although the base recipe is simple, it's deceptively difficult depending on the ingredients you use. Because not all gins are created equal, right? Correct. So a classic London dry gin creates like one level of balance, but if you use like a softer contemporary gin that plays down the juniper and accents citrus or other notes. That's creating another type of balance. Different vermoofs bring out different levels of sweetness. We called out specifically in ⁓ the last episode that these were supposed to be the Torino, right? Antika formula. It was supposed to be that kind of route because we're looking for a big bold to stand up against a big bold in the compare. So the vermoofs play differently. We all have our own vermouth that we'd like to use in a Manhattan per se, right? So that. will change out sweetness and spice. Even serving temperatures in this one matters. Again, a fresh bottle that's been off the shelf is different than the bottle that's been the refrigerator and chilled. Yeah, and so sometimes what happens is bartenders start with that equal parts ratio as the starting point, but then they'll tweak the recipe depending on the gin they use, the vermouth they use. Maybe they go and an ounce and a quarter of gin or three quarters of Kimpari or Richard Vermouse or maybe a navy strength gin, they're still making a Negroni. True. They're simply adjusting that balance to fit their ingredients. What else? And I mean that's something that David Wondrich, the famous cocktail historian, points out in ⁓ the Oxford Companion of Spirits and Cocktails. The equal parts ratio became the standard because it's memorable and elegant, but professional bartenders have always viewed it as a starting point rather than some sort of immutable law. The Negroni's enduring appeal lies in its balance, not necessarily in rigid adherence to this ratio. All right then, Dr. Jones. Here's a question for you. If someone asked you to describe the Negroni in one sentence, one sentence now, what would you say? Well, I'm glad I've had time to kind of think about this as we discussed this earlier. The Negroni is the perfect intersection of balance and intensity. Every ingredient is loud enough to stand on its own, but somehow not overpower the others. I mean, again, it goes back to the metaphor of the orchestra. Okay. No single instrument dominates, and every ingredient contributes something different. Jin brings those botanicals. Compare contributes to the bitterness and the citrus. The vermouth ⁓ provides that richness, ⁓ some of those spices, and definitely the wine character to ⁓ to the cocktail. Take away any one of those three, and it simply isn't the Negroni anymore. Yes. Done. How about the Spagliato? Yeah, so the Negruni Spagliato is one of the few classic cocktails whose identity is built around an accident. And unlike many cocktail origin stories which are difficult to verify, the story behind the spagliato is remarkably well documented. And our story goes from Florence to Milan. And in the early 1970s, a bartender named Mirko Stocchetto was working at Barbaso, a neighborhood cafe that had become a gathering place for designers, architects, artists, and business professionals. Okay. Now, Stocchetto wasn't just another bartender. Okay. Before opening Barbasso, he had worked at other legendary bars and he ⁓ had opened Barbasso in the err took over it in 1967, taking it from like just a simple wine bar to one of Italy's great cocktail institutions. But this was around some kind of good timing though. Yeah. So Milan's emerging as a global center of fashion and design. And his bar became a part of that creative energy because of the people who were coming to the bar. So you got these world-renowned designers mingling with neighborhood regulars during apertivo hours. And so according to this story, at sometime in the early seventies, Stocetto was preparing a Negruni during a busy service. He reached for what he thought was the gin. Instead he grabbed prosecco. And rather than discarding the drink, he served it. ⁓ the guests loved it and the Negruni Spagliato, the mistaken negruni, was born. No, it was just true or not. So, again, whether it exactly happened that way or not, Barbasso unquestionably became the home of the drink. Okay. Unlike some cocktail origin stories that surfaced decades after the fact, the connection between the Spagliato and this bar has consistently been maintained by the bar itself and by generations of bartenders. The drink spread First through Italy, gradually throughout Europe, and eventually became a fixture on cocktail menus around the world. ⁓ one thing I've noticed teaching cocktail classes is that people think they dislike Negronis, right? They often think ⁓ it's too bright, too bitter. The one thing that this does that the gin doesn't do in the Negroni is it softens those notes, right? Yeah, the carbonation of the sparkling wine changes the perception by lifting aroma, softening the bitterness, it increases the impression of freshness. I mean, in part of this is why like champagne cocktails and spritzes are so appealing. The lower alcohol can play into this as well. Like a lower ABV helps kind of tame it down, definitely adding gin to mine bumps it up a little bit, but the sparkling wine definitely tames it and lengthens it. Yeah. So I mean, you can almost do this more Americano Salampour more than an ounce of sparkling wine, but it does ⁓ is consistent with the spirit of apertivo and sessionable drinking. I would say yours goes more with the spirit of it than mine does because of the spirit. Absolutely. So how did the Negroni like how did it conquer the world? Well for much of the 20th century the Negroni remains an Italian favorite. Okay. It wasn't obscure, but it's not certainly not the international superstar it is today. And so the drink travels after World War II. As tourism increases, Italian food becomes more popular abroad. You know, people go to Italy. I mean, like we we talked about traveling in Europe. You go to these places, whether it's Apertivo Hour in Italy or Vermouth in Spain, and you become really taken with that style of drinking and eating. Yeah, we've we've Gone there before, we've experienced this, and we go there to experience it. I mean, we could have our own ⁓ aperitivos here, and we try to do that maybe on a Friday afternoon. Virtually we'll get together and have our little apertivo time, but it's something that can't be replicated, not in our current environment of at least where we are, right? Yeah. And I mean, if you had walked into a lot of American bars in the 1970s and 1980s, you were much more likely to find people ordering pinha coladas and Harvey Wallbangers or Long Island Iced than Negronies. Negronies were never like they they never ever disappeared here, but they were just not mainstream classics here, right? Yeah, and I mean they I don't know that they really ever had their moment until the craft. Cocktail Renaissance of the late 1990s and early 2000s. So bartenders are rediscovering those classics from the pre-prohibition era. ⁓ the Italian aperitifs, like classic techniques in general, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They were looking to like to create drinks that had this history, the structure, things that we talked about in the previous like episode, the bold flavors, correct? And the Negroni just checked out all those boxes. Yeah, and I mean for bartenders, it's easy to teach. Definitely one one one. Yeah, it's easy to batch for a busy service because it's all spirit. You don't have to worry about citrus. You can just pour, stir, and serve. ⁓ and it relies on ingredients that can stay on the back bar. No fresh citrus. Yeah. So while if you refrigerate your vermouth, you can sell have that for weeks. And I think we talked about this before. It became a rite of passage, though. Right? There's some flavors that require some repetition to acquire the taste. It needs a little something extra, but are there any studies that like distinguish around this? Yeah, so psychologists who study tastes often distinguish between innate preferences and acquired preferences. Okay. Humans are naturally drawn to sweetness from birth, but Bitterness is something we often learn to appreciate over time. Like people don't typically people don't like black coffee the first time they try it. They have to add sugar and cream. Black coffee is an acquired taste. Like wine, typically people start with wine coolers or sweet Rieslings before they get to drier red wines. And this learning process is shaped by culture. repeated exposure and positive associations and the Negroni fits neatly into that framework. It's not trying to mask bitterness, it puts the bitterness kind of front and center. And as your palate develops, what once seemed Harsh begins to reveal complexity. And that's part of the enduring appeal of this, right? It's the g drink doesn't change. We do. I do. Yeah. I love that. The Negroni becomes ⁓ becomes a marker of your own journey, right? Like it started here, it was and now it's to this point where you go to a bar and that's kind of a staple. You'd base you kind of judge that bar on how they make a Negroni. Yeah, and let's be honest, social media doesn't hurt either. Not at all. The brilliant ruby red color, a large clear cube, an orange slice, the heavy rocks glass, it makes a beautiful photograph. And some cocktails are famous because of how they taste. The Negroni becomes famous because it tastes distinctive, and it looks icon. Let's go to the cocktail renaissance and this Negroni week, right? Like this is part of that renaissance for them and how it bec has become a cult classic. Yeah, so as bartenders rediscovered these classic recipes, ⁓ the Negroni was Perfectly positioned for that revival. It's historically significant. It's visually striking, and it's simple enough for guests to remember and recreate at home. Right? It's you if you have a liquor cabinet at home, chances are you have gin, you might have sweet vermouth if you like Manhattan. So maybe you're just going to the liquor store to get that Kimpari. But then something happened in 2013. I remember it fairly vividly. Yeah, is ⁓ it was the creation of Negruni Week. And so Mbibe magazine and Kim Hurry partnered together to create Negruni Week and invited bars around the world to feature Negrunies and donate a portion of the proceeds to charitable organizations. ⁓ I I still remember that. That's the reason it was iconic. I still have and remember that that edition of or issue of ⁓ Bive. Yeah, and what Sarna is just a few hundred participating bars now is a global event involving thousands of establishments across dozens of countries. It's remarkable because it demonstrates that cocktails can build community, right? More than just our local little bar of us having friends and social there, but that There is a huge community behind even just a cocktail. Yeah. And the Grooney Week isn't simply a marketing campaign. It became an annual celebration of hospitality, craftsmanship, and philanthropy. For one week each, your bars from Nashville all the way to Tokyo, right? Yeah, Sao Paulo to London. All participate in the same shared tradition. And that's a powerful reminder that cocktails are. Cultural artifacts. They connect people across languages and borders. If you have never tried a Negroni, please consider this your invitation to do so. If you didn't enjoy your first one, don't give up. Come back. Try it again. Or try it again. Your palate may ⁓ surprise you. And if you're already a Negroni devotee, we hope today's episode gave you a deeper appreciation for the history behind what's in your glass. And until then, we'd love to hear from you though. Are you a Negroni traditionalist? Do you prefer the spagliato? Or is there a variation that has earned a permanent place in your home bar? Let us know on social media and don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're enjoying the show, leave a rating or review ⁓ that helps other students of the cocktail find us. We're ⁓ on YouTube, we're on Instagram, TikTok, or if you're a podcast listener, we're on Spotify and Apple. So next time on Into the Barchive, we're going to discover what happens when bartenders begin treating the Negroni not just as a classic cocktail, but as a creativity. Yeah, and along the way we'll talk about why the Negroni may be one of the most endlessly adaptable cocktails ever created. And what makes a variation feels like a genuine descendant rather than just another riff. So until next time, keep exploring the past one drink at a time as we dive deeper into the bark hive.