Celebrate Negroni Week, June 2–8, at Your Favorite Bar, or with One of These Glowing Variations

The Dimmi Negroni — made with Campari, gin, and the light and floral
Dimmi Liquore di Milano — glows in late-afternoon light. 

Created by Imbibe Magazine and Campari, Negroni Week, a seven-day celebration of the famous cocktail and all its variations, promises to raise money for every Negroni-style cocktail ordered in participating bars across America and other parts of the globe. This money will, in turn, go to the bars’ charity of choice. Drink for a cause and patronize your favorite drinking establishments this week that are participating in Negroni Week. Relish in the bracing, bittersweet botanicals in Campari and your favorite gin. You can choose your vermouth as well, from Carpano Antica Formula to Punt e Mes, and to other herbal aperitifs such as Cynar and Suze.

Seven nights out in a row might be too many for you, so perhaps you’d rather stay home one night and share a cocktail in front of the big screen. Here is where we offer you some charity. Recipes, culled from favorites over the years, and some we’ve come up with ourselves. A Negroni is meant to be shared among charming and attractive adults, like you. Its redolence, a heady bouquet, fills the room and makes you a little bold, yet playful. Get carried away. You’re owning it. Start a new flirtation, or rekindle a fizzling one. Or just embrace friendship. Your week begins on Monday, June 2. Start planning your visits to your favorite liquor stores now, you sexy thing, or have it delivered! It’s time to discover how you like your perfect Negroni. Then take that knowledge and taste memories with you, go to one of the participating bars, and let them blow your mind with variations that are sure to please you and the gods of insobriety.

If you’re looking for something to nibble alongside a Negroni, just remember that, in general, Negroni-style cocktails pair wonderfully with blue cheese, dates, and seasoned sweet potato crisps. Other suggestions follow.

Punt e Mes Negroni
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

We love the bold flavors and Italian ingenuity for creating the most exquisite bitter amari, Campari. Who hasn’t beheld that red carmine glow and been bewitched by its bitter orange yet sweetly balanced flavors. You feel as though you must immediately fly to Rome for dinner. It’s perfect with gin — very continental and traditional at the same time. And these opposites attract with the help from one of our favorite vermouths, the bittersweet orange zestiness of Punt e Mes, a truly lovely and bracing fortified wine. Wonderful and exhilarating.

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces gin (we like Dorothy Parker from New York Distilling)
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Punt e Mes
orange peel (use a peeler to get one about 1–2 inches long; try not getting too much white pith)

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass or coupe. Express orange peel over drink by giving it a quick pinch with the rind facing out. Wipe the rim of the glass with the rind and drop it into the glass.

Broker’s Negroni
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Brokers gin, the one with the black bowler hat, is an affordable and tasty London dry gin that mixes well with lots of other spirits. It’s quadruply distilled and boasts that it “does not follow the modern trend of using weird and wonderful spirits and botanicals” but focuses on perfecting the usual herbs and roots (such as juniper berries, cinnamon, and angelica root) used to flavor a perfect London dry gin. It’s quite lovely. In this Negroni, we use the traditional Campari, but specify Carpano Antico Formula, the smoothest sweet vermouth we’ve ever come across, along with the Broker’s. It’s delightful up or on the rocks, with or without a twist of lemon or orange, and pairs surprisingly well with guacamole.

Ingredients
1 ounce Broker’s gin
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass or coupe, or into an ice-filled rocks glass. Add garnish, if using.

Dimmi Negroni
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Sometimes you crave a Negroni but have sadly run out of vermouth. Necessity is the art of invention, so grab a bottle of something that looks promising and start mixing. One such alternative to vermouth is the spirited liquor from Milan called Dimmi. (It used to be called Veloce, but had to change its name for legal reasons. We like Dimmi, which translates to a friendly “Tell me.”) It’s made from organic winter wheat and grappa di Nebbiolo, then infused with a pleasing array of herbs and fruits, followed by a second infusion of peach and apricot blossoms, which adds a sweet flowery aroma. We like mixing Dimmi with bold gins, like Bombay Sapphire—their botanicals mingle well—and, of course, the traditional Campari. So perfect on the rocks for warmer evenings.

Ingredients
1 ounce Dimmi Liquore di Milano
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Bombay Sapphire Gin
lemon twist, as garnish

Method
Stir in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Add garnish.

Negroni Primavera
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

We dubbed this Negroni Primavera because of the spring ingredients: artichoke in Cynar, plums in the Greenhook Ginsmith Beach Plum liqueur, flowers from three different grapes in the June liqueur. As the ice melts, the drinks changes from a bittersweet, bracing, lightly bubbly aperitif, to a southern sweet tea, mellower and rounder. Sweet potato crisps might be a great pairing with these.

Ingredients
1 ounce Plymouth gin
2/3 to 3/4 ounce Greenhook Ginsmith Beach Plum Liqueur
1/4 to 1/3 ounce L’esprit de June liqueur
1 ounce Cynar
2–3 ounces soda
lemon twist

Method
Stir the first four ingredients in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into an ice-filled double rocks or highball glass. Add soda, then the lemon twist.

Follow us next week as we present more Negroni variations for your delectation.

photo © Paul Zablocki, Cocktail Buzz

Summertime Cocktail Experiments, sans Summertime Ingredients

Variations on the Manhattan are all the rage. This Cynar Manhattan will delight you with its bittersweet bliss.

This summer our terrace garden lies fallow. For the third summer in a row, our inattentive landlord has neglected the reconstruction of our outdoor space, not to mention the repairs needed inside, most likely to get us out of here so he could then fix the place up and jack up the rent, in preparation for multi-six-digit-figure tenants. Sound familiar? Normally, we would be making infusions and party food nibbles using organic fresh herbs. Hyssop Julep this year? Sorry, no dice. Borage-garnished Pimm’s Cup? Not a chance. We don’t even have any basil, mint, or rosemary, three summertime staples we’d be muddling, chiffonading, and infusing in order to reinvigorate our library of cocktail and appetizer recipes. A summer barbecue without Gin Stevies and brunches without Adams have reduced us many a night to bourbon and ginger–swilling layabouts.

But enough of that. Let’s look on the bright side. Because of our lack of herbaceous freshness, the two of us have been forced (and we use “forced” the way a lush is forced to accept the offer of a second drink) to use primarily the spirits on our shelves. The results have been elucidative: A good drink is a good drink no matter how many ingredients, common or obscure, fresh or preserved, it takes to make it. Take for instance our new “up” tequila cocktail. In our notebook, it’s simply called “Tequila Martini/Manhattan,” but that will not do for this pale-to-almost-clear, lovely concoction. Let’s call it a

Blanco Nuevo
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
2 ounces silver tequila
1 3/4 ounces white (bianco) vermouth
1/4 ounce rhubarb syrup (from Ikea)
1 dash Regan’s orange bitters
brandied cherry, as garnish (these were homemade, but any kind you like will do)

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. Add cherry.

Looking at it, you would indeed think this was some strange hybrid of a Martini and a Manhattan, but the first sip gives away the main ingredient, tequila. You must use silver tequila for this baby or you won’t get that whisper-of-amber hue. The rhubarb syrup adds some bittersweet bliss, and the white vermouth, which is the perfect foil for silver tequila, balances the tequila and the syrup. A dash of orange bitters rounds it out. The cherry is mere folly, but, when you make your own, you end your drink with a boozy reward.

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Another one of our experiments, a variation on the classic Manhattan (if you’ve followed us you know how much we love to riff on the Manhattan), uses Cynar [pronounced chee-NAHR], a dark and bittersweet Italian liqueur, or amaro, in conjunction with the requisite sweet vermouth. Again, we bandy about the phrase ”bittersweet bliss,” because that is what you’ll be experiencing once you’ve drawn this luscious libation to your lips. We’ll just keep the name straightforward and call it a

Cynar Manhattan
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
2 ounces rye (we used Rittenhouse bonded)
1/4 ounce Cynar (artichoke amaro)
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth (we used Martini & Rossi)
brandied cherry, as garnish

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. Add cherry.

If you love other amaro, such as Campari, you’ll really take a shine to this one. Cynar is made from artichokes. It sounds odd, but it works so well with rye and sweet vermouth. You don’t need your usual dash of bitters because the Cynar takes care of that. This is the drink we sip on our derelict terrace, while viewing the crepuscular Manhattan skyline. Both drink and view are splendid.

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While messing around with the new-and-improved Galliano (remember Harvey Wallbangers?), we decided that both rye and bonded applejack (American apple brandy) made it taste mm mm good, along with some Carpano Antica sweet vermouth. Some bitters added more piquancy and united all these spirits into a drink we call Willam Tell All (which is what you’ll be doing after just one of these).

William Tell All
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 ounce bonded apple brandy (Laird)
1 ounce rye (Templeton)
1/2 ounce Galliano l’Autentico
3/4 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
dash Angostura bitters
dash Peychaud’s bitters
expressed lemon peel

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. Express lemon peel and discard.

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And just in case you thought we didn’t like Manhattans, here’s another variation we have been playing around with that uses aged rum. Right now it’s called a

Rumhattan
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
2 ounces aged rum (we used Santa Teresa from Venezuela)
1 ounce Punt e Mes vermouth
1 dash angostura bitters
expressed, flamed orange peel, as garnish

Method
Stir in ice for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. Express orange peel through a match flame by holding the match over the drink and, with your other hand, in one quick, sharp squeeze, pinch the peel (outside of peel facing the match) so the oils spurt through the flame, causing a gentle flare-up. Then gently rub the outside of the peel around the rim and drop into the glass.

This aged rum Manhattan is rich and deep, with the slightest bitter edge. We even celebrated National Rum Day with it, and it pleased us immensely.

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If we try to find a common them among these three drinks, the phrase “bittersweet bliss” again looms over  the whole affair. We suppose that phrase can be applied to the way we feel about our digs: We love our pad, but we don’t like the politics that go along with being tenants of neglect. So now you know why these four drinks have been stirred quite a bit during cocktail hour this summer. Despite our whining, we love them all. And don’t forget those bourbon and gingers.