This recipe was first published as part of our cocktail history feature on The Negroni.
Bad day in the office? Need something to soothe the nerves after ordering that pesky kid to be whacked? Time for a Negroni.
The preparation of this cocktail is mostly uncontroversial. Some like to serve Negronis up, and nothing wrong with that. But try it in a rocks glass too. The dilution from the ice should shift the flavours most pleasingly. With ingredients as robust as these, dilution mellows things long before it drowns them.
30ml Campari
30ml Sweet vermouth
30ml Gin
Build over rocks in an old fashioned glass and garnish with an orange twist. If feeling extroverted, flame the twist. The classic equal parts formula works well enough that experimentation hardly seems necessary. But if you must, try increasing the gin for a cleaner, lighter, more potent drink, or cutting the vermouth slightly for a drier drink.
