With 21 Bottles, You Can Make (At Least) 343 Negronis
Mix and match your way to (nearly) a year’s worth of Negroni variations.
Links About Drinks
Have stunt Martinis gone too far? I ask because the Cheeseburger Martini exists. I understand I am part of the problem.
It “tasted like stepping into a horse’s stable. It was decidedly funky, cheese like, and sour, with a salty aftertaste.” What it’s like to drink fermented horse milk.
I’ve always said arugula is the Scotch whisky of vegetables, and so maybe it’s not a surprise that bars are using it in their cocktails. It’s a good idea! Arugula is delicious. A guy I know once gave me a small bottle of homemade arugula amaro. It was kind of incredible, in a good way. I’ve been meaning to try making my own for a while.
On the decline of politically themed cocktails in D.C. These have migrated to private parties at homes. Even funny cocktail names are going offline! It’s a new analog era.
An argument for split-base cocktails. We’ve covered a few of those here.
A 21 Bottle Negroni Bar
At the beginning of September, I promised you an entire month of Negronis. But this week, I want to go much further than that. I want to show you a system that will let you try a new Negroni variation almost every day for a year.
For years now, I have argued that the Negroni is the ultimate home bar cocktail. It’s not just incredibly easy to make, though it is. It’s also incredibly easy to modify.
The most basic formula is just equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. You can tweak this recipe without changing the core ingredients by adjusting the proportions to, for example, make it more gin-forward, as many modern Negronis do. You can further tweak the proportions to make drinks that seem considerably less Negroni-like in character, but are nonetheless delicious.
Even more importantly, you can also treat it as a more generalizable template for cocktail creation.
It’s not a single drink with a single recipe. It’s a platform built from a pattern:
a strong spirit for the foundation
a fortified wine or something similar to soften the mix
a bittersweet liqueur to give it an edge
Pick one of each, then combine them in a drink. The Negroni is an easy-to-understand system for making and creating many, many more cocktails.
In fact, it’s so easy, so versatile, so broadly adaptable that I think you could build an entire home bar around making Negronis and Negroni variations.
This might sound limiting. But if you like Negronis, it might just be the easiest way to stock a home bar. With a collection of bottles that could fit on an ordinary bar cart, you could drink a different Negroni or Negroni-esque almost every day of the year.
And so, as this year’s celebration of Negronis comes to an end, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to look at a selection of bottles for a 21-bottle Negroni bar that will let you mix-and-match your way to at least 343 Negroni variations, and probably even more.
If 21 bottles sounds like too many, don’t worry. You can put together a 9-bottle version that will let you make more than two dozen variations, or a 15-bottle version that opens up at least 125 potential combinations.
I say at least because, with a little bit of skill and know-how, you can put together even more Negroni-esques without expanding your bottle count.
The first question, of course, is which 21 bottles to stock. The second question, once you have those bottles in hand, is how to use them well. We’ll go over the bottles, the choices, and the omissions, and then we’ll discuss tips and tricks for iterating and improving your Negroni riffs. We’ve been building to this all month long, so we’ll be pulling lessons from the previous several weeks that we can utilize here.
Finally, we’ll look at several different Negroni variations you can make using this system. After that, the other 300-plus Negronis are up to you.
Now You See Me
Before we get to the bottle list, let’s talk about how I created it, and then let’s set some baseline expectations.
The primary goals for this list were compatibility, variety, and versatility. I wanted to select bottles that went well together, but also weren’t too similar.
So you’ll be able to make many well-known Negroni variations with this selection of bottles. But I was less concerned about ensuring that the specific ingredients of every internet-popular Negroni variation were represented.
In his groundbreaking midcentury cocktail book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury focused heavily on categorizing cocktail formulas and structures, giving readers the conceptual tools to make their own original creations. He argued that once you understood how cocktails worked, you didn’t need recipes because you could, in his words, “roll your own” using swaps and substitutions.
Embury didn’t write much about Negronis. But the theory behind this list is basically a Negroni-specific version of Embury’s roll-your-own. This is a Negroni bar designed to maximize mix-and-match drink creation for home bartenders.
I expect that some of you will have disagreements with this list. I expect you to argue with me. I spent a fair amount of time playing around with the list, but it’s possible that I’ll change my own mind by the time Negroni Week rolls around again next year.
That’s the nature of this sort of project. There is no way to be definitive. But I do believe this is a good place to start.
Now You Don’t
Finally, before we get to the bottles, I want to acknowledge some notable absences from this list.
Perhaps the most obvious is Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth. Carpano is a favorite amongst cocktail enthusiasts generally and Negroni nerds specifically. It works exceptionally well in Boulevardiers, which are essentially Negronis with whiskey instead of gin. Death & Co.’s standard Negroni recipe pairs it with Tanqueray gin. And it’s a key ingredient in one of the most famous Negroni variations, the Kingston Negroni, in which it’s paired with high-proof Smith & Cross Jamaican rum as well as Campari.
It’s not on the list because the list already has a sweet vermouth, Cocchi di Torino, and another bittersweet vermouth, Punt e Mes. And as I noted, I was looking for variety and differentiation. I also think that Carpano, which is big, bold, and vanilla forward, can sometimes be tough to work into lighter Negronis. Plus, if you want to make a drink that reads like a Kingston Negroni, you can use a custom-blended vermouth—two parts Punt e Mes to one part Cocchi di Torino. You won’t get the vanilla explosion you’d get from the Carpano, but you’ll get a similar intensity.
Other notable omissions: There’s no Lillet, so if you’re making a White Negroni, you’ll need to use Dolin blanc—but that’s better anyway. Relatedly, there’s no Suze, a French liqueur most commonly found in the White Negroni, but you can use Saler’s in its place. Saler’s has the same general gentian-root sensibility as Suze, but it’s mellower and thus easier to match with other bottles.
There’s only one gin on this list, and it’s Ford’s. That’s because it’s my favorite gin for a Negroni. But others like Sipsmith, Plymouth, and, yes, Tanqueray will work too. There are even some people who still like Beefeater. Using a different gin, even a different London dry gin, can take an otherwise by-the-numbers Negroni in a very different direction. But again, I was looking for variation, so there’s only one bottle of gin on the list.
The amaro/bitter list was surprisingly difficult to draw up. Campari and Cynar are obvious, but does it really need Aperol? I don’t drink a lot of Aperol, personally, but I have to admit that it plays exceptionally well with other ingredients, especially in lighter, softer drinks. And I did just make it a main character in an original Negroni-ish cocktail for this newsletter. I skipped some personal favorites like Bigallet China-China and Gran Classico because they’re a little too close to the Campari/Aperol zone. I skipped a whole lot of amari because they’re obscure, hard to find, and don’t have a lot of obvious uses beyond Negroni variations. But you could probably put together a bitter-hound’s version of this list with just one bottle of gin, one bottle of sweet vermouth, and 19 bottles of amaro. If you live within shopping distance of A. Litteri, the amaro-rich Italian market in Washington, D.C.’s Union Market district, you might be tempted to do so.
In any case, I am well aware that this list does not have everything. But I tried to balance it in the general direction of providing a wide range of options that are also reasonably likely to work well together. If you disagree, well, that’s what the comments are for.
Let’s look at the list. And then let’s talk about how to use it.