As part of the ongoing celebration of Negroni Week, now is the perfect time to try out some negroni variations. With its simple formula of equal parts of gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari, the negroni is the ideal template for playing with different flavors and tweaking ingredients to make the drink your own.
The good news is that the negroni template is very flexible, so you can use just about any combination of spirit, sweeter aperitif, and bitter amaro and make something tasty. If you’ve got a well stocked bar and you feel like being brave, try out any combination and see how it goes.
If you’d rather follow a recipe, however, that’s absolutely an option as well. One of the most common variations on the negroni is to change out the spirit. So, instead of gin, you can use mezcal for an Oaxacan negroni or whiskey for a Boulevardier. This is a pretty simple change which can alter the deep, heavier and boozier flavors carried by the spirit.
While these spirit variations can be fun, I love the gin in a negroni as I feel like it plays exceptionally well with the sweetness of the vermouth and the bitterness of Campari. So when I make variations, I prefer to work with the vermouth or the amaro.
How to swap out amaros
Though Campari is most commonly considered only as a cocktail ingredient — after all, it’s a rare person who wants to drink Campari neat — it is technically part of the family of drinks called amaros. This group of bitter, Italian liqueurs are flavored with herbs and tend to have complex, rich, and herbal flavors. They are often drunk alone or on ice as aperitifs, though they make for great mixing ingredients too.
So when you want to swap out the Campari in a negroni, you want something which is similar enough in that it has herbal and bitter flavors and a relatively high abv. Other types of amaro are the obvious choice, though some are too sweet — I love Montenegro, but I don’t think it provides enough bitterness to balance out the flavors of gin and sweet vermouth.
One swap I love to make is to bring in Cynar. This amaro is made, most unexpectedly, of artichoke, though I don’t think that’s obvious from drinking it. It doesn’t have a very savory or vegetal flavor, but rather has a kind of earthiness that reminds me of mate tea. It’s also thick, rich, and a dark brown color which doesn’t look quite as good as the red of Campari but does add a delicious rich, smooth, caramel-ish flavor to the drink which makes for a fascinating variation.
How to make a Cynar Negroni
Ingredients:
- 30 ml gin
- 30 ml sweet vermouth
- 30 ml Cynar
Method:
Add all three ingredients to a mixing glass with plenty of ice and stir well — until the sides of the glass are cold to the touch. Then strain into a tumbler with a fresh, large ice cube.
Garnish with an orange peel, first rubbing it around the rim of the glass to release the oils.
