Cheers to the Negroni — with its sprezzatura simplicity, good looks, and irresistible taste, it can transport you to the Old Country.
WRITTEN BY DAVID ZIVAN
Does it take on the color of a sunset off the Amalfi Coast? The burnt red of a Florentine princess’s gown? It’s hard to say exactly, but somehow a bracing, balanced Negroni prompts dreams of Italy—of voyages gone by, or those still to come.
As with most classics in the cocktail canon, an exact date of birth is uncertain, but it’s generally agreed that it was invented around 1919, most likely in Florence. A Count Camillo Negroni was indeed drinking there then, and he features in most of the drink’s charming origin stories. He himself was quite the adventurer and is believed to have traveled to the States for a time. The fastidious drinks historian David Wondrich casts doubt on the man’s status as a count—but acknowledges that Camillo’s grandfather, Luigi, carried the title.
Is there a difference? It seems certain that, about a century ago, someone was looking for a bit more grip in their Americano (just vermouth and bitters, and thereby lighter) and received a dollop of gin and the addition of an orange peel. Soon thereafter, the recipe—gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari in equal parts—appeared in manuals in Paris and elsewhere. By mid-century, the alchemical wonder had taken hold further down the peninsula. In 1947, working in Rome, a 32-year-old Orson Welles (six years after Citizen Kane) mentioned the charms of the drink in a letter to an editor back in Ohio. By then, the drink had already made it to the New World, where it has thankfully remained.
Perhaps the only ingredient of the three that has resisted substitution or myth is Campari—a bitter with its own rich history. In 1860, Gaspare Campari conjured the red wonder, and its composition has hardly changed since. By 1867, the spirited entrepreneur had moved his headquarters to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a grand cultural edifice named for a former King, with views of Milan’s Piazza Duomo. The outpost was named Caffè Campari, and his son Davide was born there that year. At the turn of the 20th century, the now-grown lad would be present for the birth of the aperitivo tradition. Campari became and remains tethered to Italian culture in many ways, from the iconography of its 1920s posters to a short commercial film shot in 1984 (the first such effort from Federico Fellini). The Camparino in Galleria cafe is still there in central Milan, should you be on holiday considering fabrics and have an hour to spare.
“Next time you are sitting in a trattoria,” says cocktail writer Rob Chirico, “give the Negroni a try. Any culture that gave the world the Renaissance, carbonara, and Sophia Loren deserves a shot.” We don’t need convincing. Florence today—and Rome, and Milan, and Palermo for that matter—enjoys its share of swank, inventive, darkened cocktail lounges, and the order of a Negroni is never frowned upon. But the drink’s italianità makes a strong case for somewhere al fresco—a table at the shaded end of a broad piazza or, better still, somewhere in dappled sunshine, overlooking the sea.
