Negroni Week Goes Out With a Bang, By Which I Mean a Kingston Negroni
The right rum. The right vermouth. Campari. Negroni Week ends with a classic trio.
Over the past few years, this newsletter has covered most of what I consider the essential Negroni riffs — the versions of the drink that have traveled far and wide on cocktail menus and at home bars.
But most is not all. So although we have looked at the Boulevardier, the White Negroni, the Negroni Sbagliato, the Mezcal Negroni and its offspring, and so on and so forth, we have never looked at a Negroni based on rum.
I am speaking, of course, of the Kingston Negroni.
The Kingston Negroni is among the most famous and most popular Negroni variations for several reasons.
First, it’s easy to make, with a straightforward swap of rum for gin in the usual equal parts, 1:1:1, spirit-vermouth-amaro formula.
Second, it has a memorable and unusual character, taking the conventional dry-and-bittersweet Negroni flavor profile and flipping it, transforming the drink into something funky, decadent, and wild, with notes of banana, ripe berries, caramel, coffee, and cocoa. If the original Negroni is a middle-aged hipster nerd with thick-rimmed glasses and a day job involving spreadsheets, and the Boulevardier is a guy with a booming voice, a shaggy beard, and a bass guitar that he never seems to actually play, then the Kingston Negroni is the party animal of the Negroni family — loud but affable, possibly arriving on a skateboard, probably wearing polka dots. The Kingston Negroni might be a little bit obnoxious, but mostly it’s just a whole lot of fun.
Third, it’s benefited from the renewed interest in rum, and especially Jamaican rum, over the last decade thanks to the tiki revival.
Finally — and perhaps most importantly — it’s delicious, almost ridiculously so. It’s the kind of drink where you might take a sip and find yourself literally laughing at how tasty this very particular, rather silly combination turns out to be.
The boost provided by Negroni Week, and the general enthusiasm for all things Negroni, probably helped too.
In other words, it’s simple, strange, and tasty, — and it slotted neatly into multiple cocktail-enthusiast trends.
The Kingston Negroni is incredibly simple to make: It relies on just three relatively common ingredients stirred together in equal parts. But those ingredients are quite specific — it’s not just any rum and any vermouth and Campari. It’s the right rum and the right vermouth (and, er, Campari). And there are some ways to experiment with the formula as well.
So to cap off this year’s Negroni week, we’re going to cross off the last of the major Negronis from our list and look at the Kingston Negroni.