Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Negroni!

Time for a shift drink at the end of the night.

It’s that end-of-the-shift checklist that can do you in sometimes.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I’ve been working hard at the bar and on some other creative projects lately. The news … well, it’s been a long time since good news was a thing. It seems like every day is the end of a long, busy shift, and the floor still needs to be mopped, and it’s all damn exhausting. Time for a shift drink — a little pick-me-up to keep your feet under you, numb the pain in your calves, and make everything a little more bearable. Time for a Negroni. Here’s the recipe.

Negroni

1 ½ oz Tanqueray gin

1 ½ oz Campari

1 ½ oz Carpano sweet vermouth

Add all ingredients to a rocks glass over ice. Stir. Garnish with an expressed orange peel.

I love Negronis. They’ve kicked around the bar scene since 1919, when Count Negroni needed a firm pick-me-up and swapped the soda in his Americano for gin instead of soda. They’ve never gone out of style since then. I suppose they’re not for everyone, but you should try one at least once. A solid Negroni is so very, very crisp, sharper than a gin and tonic but smoothed out by the jammy, wine-like vermouth. It’s a perfect cocktail.

And yet, bartenders keep fiddling with the recipe to make it “special.” I’ve seen strawberry-infused Campari for extra tartness. I’ve seen a deranged bartender run the vermouth through a moka pot and turn it into vermouth-espresso, in the name of creating a “moka negroni.” (Fun to say. Terrible to drink. Wonderful way to ruin your Moka pot. No, my wife wouldn’t let me do this.)

I fully intended to participate in the madness. I had an insane version of the Negroni with Fernet Branca, 99 bananas, and red wine ready to go. I drank far too many of these things trying to get the balance right. And the next morning, after some eggs, coffee, and Advil, I realized that I had not, in fact, made a better Negroni. The classic hadn’t been improved at all by my fiddling with the recipe.

I’m not the only one to try this, mind you. There are some wildly bitter takes on the Negroni floating around out there. I thought Eeyore’s Requiem had a lot of promise, with a touch of Fernet and Cynar playing backup to the Campari. There are sweeter variations on the Negroni, too. The Negroni Sbagliato swaps the gin in a Negroni for champagne, simplifying and sweetening the original drink. I tried most of these, and every time I came to the same conclusion: “I’d rather have a Negroni.”

It’s one of the pitfalls of creative bartending. Mixologists love fiddling with perfection, and more often than not, that involves taking one of our favorite ingredients and adding it to something that doesn’t actually need it. Fernet Branca is a perfect example. I love Fernet. I’ll happily do shots of the dark, minty, bitter stuff after a long shift. But just because I love it, does it have a place in an already balanced cocktail?

Some things don’t need to be fixed or made more complicated. Restraint can be the purest example of artistry. The best cocktails I’ve written stay close to the originals, with just a few swaps to rebuild the flavor profile of the drink. In this case, the Negroni hits all the right notes. The cocktail has a complex interplay of rich sweetness and drying bitterness that’s more than the sum of its parts. And yet, it’s also comfort food; the pick-me-up that keeps me going at the end of a long, long day. Sometimes, that’s all you can ask from a drink.

And I’d end it at that, but as I was walking out the door last night, my boss suggested making an Aborrio Rice Negroni. It’s the same idea as a Sushi Rice Negroni, only using ingredients native to our kitchen. It’s a really sexy idea. I’m tempted. I’ll try it and let you know how it goes …

Let’s talk ingredients:

Back alley shot. Cigarette butts were gently placed on the ground after this photo was taken.

Tanqueray Gin: Tanqueray is our rail gin at Hemingway’s. A crisp, classic gin is preferable to something like Hendrick’s or a citrus gin in a Negroni. Softer, more approachable gins tend to flutter away when confronted with intense flavors like Campari.

Campari: Once upon a time, Campari got its intense red hue from cochineal. These days, it’s a synthetic red dye. It’s an open question whether artificial food coloring or the shells of beetles are healthier for you. Either way, this bittersweet liquor is a must-have for a serious liquor cabinet.

Carpano Sweet Vermouth: A good sweet vermouth should have a jam-like mouth feel with herbal, complex background flavors. This brand does the job wonderfully.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by and I’ll make a drink for you … or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette.

OPEN THREAD!