What’s the perfect recipe for creating a “classic” cocktail? We’re talking the kind of drink that spans generations — not just surviving but thriving through endless industry trends and ever-changing consumer preferences. We propose three key “ingredients.”
First, the cocktail must be easy to make with simple ingredients that won’t spike your costs. It should balance crowd-pleasing deliciousness with intriguing complexity. And it has to be endlessly versatile.
Exactly what defines the Negroni.
As the legend goes, the Negroni is a riff itself, born out of the Americano cocktail in 1919, in the aristocratic Caffè Casoni in Florence, Italy. Inspired by his travels abroad, the Count Camillo Negroni asked bartender Fosco Scarselli to “strengthen” his usual Americano (which he’d discovered in the United States) by replacing the soda with gin, in honor of his recent trip to London. Fosco added his own twist — using an orange peel instead of lemon to garnish.
This new cocktail was originally called the “Count Negroni-Style Americano,” before taking on its shorter (and far catchier) modern name. It quickly became one of Italy’s most famous aperitif cocktails but it wasn’t until the 1960s that it arrived in the U.S. — and it wouldn’t go fully “mainstream” until the early 2000s.
