It Takes Skill To Make A Bad Negroni

And this bar knocked it out of the park

The Negroni is one of my most treasured cocktails. Not just because it tastes like summer and makes me feel like an Italian prince, although those are both valid reasons. It’s because the cocktail is so simple it’s almost impossible to mess it up. It requires no bells, no egg whites, and no whistles to make something that is truly special out of ingredients that are both cheap and readily available.

Let’s start at the top.

All you need is a glass, ice, gin, Campari, vermouth, an orange peel, and voilà, you’ve got everything you need at your fingertips to make one of the greatest cocktails known to man. You don’t even need to know how to do maths as the ratio is a simple one-part gin, one-part Campari, and one-part vermouth, to taste, of course. It’s the egalitarian nature of the drink that makes me love it so. Anyone can make it, anyone can enjoy it, and even with cheap ingredients an amatear bartender can conjure up a very special drink.

This is why, whenever I drink a bad one, I have to ask myself what the hell went wrong?

I don’t normally like talking about my bad cocktail experiences. The bartending world is a glass house, so to speak, and one shouldn’t throw stones nor should they say things when the nicest thing is to say nothing at all. My mum taught me that. She also taught me that whenever I drink alcohol I’m giving myself brain damage, so let’s split the difference and write about the bad cocktail experience while leaving the name of the bar that inflicted me with it out of the article.

Although, I will say that it was in Bangkok, the home of many good cocktails.

This was not one of them.

It was billed as a raisin and balsamic Negroni, a billing alone which made me seek it out in the back alleys of the city. The first thing that struck me about the cocktail bar was the air-conditioning. It was like going on an adventure with Shackleton. I was hit by an arctic blast that had me playing musical chairs to find a place where I didn’t need my winter coat, something which I didn’t have on hand given I was in Bangkok. Once I found an appropriate seat and ordered what I thought would be an appropriate cocktail, I watched as it came out and felt immediately suspicious. The orange peel they used was less of a peel and more of a patch, making up a tiny little island atop the big cube of ice and was adorned with three raisins that immediately fell down the side of the drink and were lost to the ocean below.

The size of the orange peel meant it would have been impossible to express, which is the act of twisting the peel to release the oils and aroma of the orange into the cocktail. No matter, perhaps the orange was merely decorative, and the real flavour came from the promise of balsamic and raisin.

This was my hope.

But after the first sip, it struck me as a sad little cocktail that held none of the joy or the flavour that I associate with a Negroni. There was no sunshine, no Italian prince, just something which would have been better served as a salad dressing than in a cocktail glass. The balsamic gave it a grim flavour and the raisin was lost both in the taste and literally down the side of my glass, meaning I couldn’t even enjoy the individual raisins until the ice melted.

One taste of this Negroni made me think about this little bar in Bologna that I love. The people who work there are children. They charge four euros and make their Negroni with the cheapest ingredients known to man and it was still better than what this high-end cocktail bar was serving.

It’s a good reminder that when it comes to cocktails, bartenders need to remember that they’re not artists, they’re scientists, and when the science calls for one, one, and one, don’t go adding two unless you’re confident it’s not going to blow up something as emotional as a Negroni.