Quarantined Cocktails: The Negroni

Every Friday we’re sharing professional cocktail tips and tricks for your at-home, weekend festivities. Whether you’re curious about new ways to work with spirits on your liquor shelf, or you want fresh ideas for mock-tails you can create, we’ll create something for you.

This is week four! We are continuing to learn more about the way flavors and spirits play off of each other, via the formats of the most classic cocktails bartenders learned first, to build the most innovative beverages you enjoy in cocktail bars.

Inspired by Stanley Tucci’s recent viral video — and the subsequent mixologist revolt (watch this and this for a good chuckle) — we’re making my all-time favorite cocktail this week, a Negroni! We’ll talk about why he made it all wrong, when to shake when to stir, and generally take a deeper dive into how to craft the perfect at-home cocktail.

This bitter classic is an acquired taste for some, thanks to evolution programming us to register bitter flavors as poison for, ya know, survival. Not to worry though, there are quite literally hundreds of variations to play with so there’s one out there for you! If you do happen love these cocktails as much as I do however, you should know Negroni Week (it’s a real thing) has been moved back to September this year, it’s a lot of fun for cocktail lovers and it’s all for charity.

If you’re interested, there’s always a fascinating history behind these 100-year-old classics and there are few people who tell these tales better than David Wondrich.

Please share with us your photos, recipes, and riffs on Instagram and Facebook. As always, if you have specific ingredients or future requests, shoot an email to quarantinedcocktails@gmail.com.

Side note, the video this week is a bit longer than it will normally be because we’re getting deeper into technique and that takes some explanation.

Full Transcript:

Hey Community! I’m Leigh Ann and it’s already week four of our series, Quarantined Cocktails, where each week I’m teaching you how to make a new classic cocktail so you have a better understanding of the flavors, the spirits, the techniques that come into play in all the cocktails that you have.

Hopefully over the weekend, it gives you some confidence to dig into the random fruits and citrus ingredients, and spirits you have — we’ve all got some random stuff at this point. So hopefully through some of these videos, you’re able to start to get a little creative yourself.

Please share what you’re making, make something beautiful, make something delicious. Let us know what it is, and let us know what you’re interested in moving forward.

This week, I’m particularly excited about we’re making my all-time favorite cocktail, thanks to Stanley Tucci. We’re going to be making a Negroni. So last week on his Instagram Live he made a, by all industry standards, very butchered Negroni. He pretty much did everything wrong. And I thought that was a perfect opportunity being that it’s week four to start digging into some of the techniques behind that and the reasons why that was wrong and just start to kind of dive a little bit deeper.

With that said, Before we go any further I want to say like my biggest I guess you would say “motto” in the beverage world, in general, is the way you like to drink it is the way it should be made. And no one should tell you that it’s a cocktail we won’t make or it shouldn’t be done that way. If you like it, make it that way.

You know what, Stanley really enjoyed his terrible Negroni and that’s perfectly okay. So, you know, the cocktail world is very much like the art world. There are certain industry standards. There are reasons those exist. And those are all great just like any industry, but with these creative fields, there is a lot of gray area.

If Jackson Pollock can find an audience for his work, then, by all means, there is certainly an audience for a Cosmo, a lemon drop, and Stanley Tucci’s negroni as long as you know you’re enjoying it. That’s all that matters.

Thanks art hum for that suddenly useful piece of cocktail party knowledge.

And with that, let’s talk about it. So, the negroni is an equal parts cocktail. It started coming into play somewhere in like the early 20th century, around the late 20s, early 30s is when it really settled into this very specific format, which is one-ounce gin, once Campari, one-ounce sweet vermouth.

In Stanley’s video he uses two ounces of gin and suggests that it can be substituted for vodka. I personally think mixologists are allergic to vodka. So there’s that. And, you know, while this is the standard format, I kind of think it’s just a place to start.

It’s a place to figure out what the flavors are, figure out what you like, maybe you want it more bitter. Maybe you want it sweeter. Maybe you want a different spirit. There are literally hundreds of acceptable variations on this cocktail. People riff it all the time. It’s truly a category of its own at this point.

So to start and just figure out what you like. You know, I’ll usually for myself, I would make this with mezcal instead of this gin. I’d use an ounce and a half of that. Three quarters of the Campari and three-quarters of the sweet vermouth, purely because I really like that spirit component and I like that balance.

You’ll figure out what that For you, maybe you love Stanley’s macaroni that’s perfectly acceptable too.

So the next piece of Stanley’s terrible Negroni is the technique, so he chose to shake. As you see, I have a stirring glass here, ready to go with ice. And thought this would be a nice time to talk about the difference between shaking and stirring. And why we do these things.

When you shake a cocktail, like we did in the first couple of weeks, when we made a Daiquiri and a margarita, you’re introducing a lot more water to your cocktail. So water is really the most important ingredient in your cocktail. And if you’re hating the way they’re coming out at home, it’s probably because that’s the ingredient that nobody really thinks about, and most people don’t realize it is even in there.

So when you shake it, you’re making it colder, you’re introducing a lot more water to it and you’re breaking down those flavors a lot more. Of whatever you’ve put in that shaker. Again, Stanley really enjoyed his, I think that you lose a lot of the nuances of the botanicals and the bitters in this particular cocktail.

But you know, James Bond wanted his Martini shaken, not stirred, too, so to each his own. But then when it comes to stirring, this is really for your spirit-forward cocktails, like the negroni, the Manhattan we made last week, an old fashioned, a martini, of vesper, all of these very spirit-forward cocktails that are 99.99% spirit.

You really want to introduce that water element a little bit more delicately, this isn’t going to get your cocktail as cold. It’s also not going to break down your ingredients quite as much. So it really allows you to highlight those spirits which is really what these cocktails aren’t meant for, they’re meant for enjoying the spirit more so.

Where the shaken ones you know, you’re playing with a lot more like balance of sweet and sour and refreshing and bitter and, you know you’re playing with, you know, different elements and not necessarily highlighting the spirit, which is what this cocktail is made for. So, with that, I’m thirsty. Let’s make one.

Something I didn’t mention that a lot of people don’t realize is you do have a sweet vermouth sitting around at home. Do remember that it is a wine product. So it will go bad. You have about a three-week shelf life on this, but make sure you refrigerate it once you open it.

Lots of people think they don’t like for most and I think that’s Primarily because most of the time they have spoiled vermouth. It’s very sour, musty, and it’s because it’s been sitting out and it’s actually gone bad.

So with that, classically, this would also be served up. I don’t have classes at my house. I also like to drink it on the rocks. So that’s the one piece that I’m not doing in the classic format for you.

And then garnish. So with this most the classic one would just be an expressed orange peel. I’m seeing a lot of people putting orange slices in there. Stanley likes to squeeze his orange slice. I wouldn’t squeeze it if I were you, maybe give it a try.

But the slice I will say looks very nice and pictures if you want to put it on Instagram. For me. I’m going to flame, I guess I should have said it two things not in the classic format, because I’m gonna flame my orange twist, just because it’s fun, really.

So if you just want to warm up the oils in your twist a little bit. Just sounds a little bit of smoke on top. I really like that part of it. So I chose to do that. But by all means stick to the classic, just do the orange twist. Start there, see what you like, and play with it from there.

And again, please let us know what you’d like to see if there are specific cocktails or particular ingredients that you’re interested in. Next week, we’ll start to get really fun with it. Now that we’ve got a solid base of shaken cocktails and stir cocktails. Until next week,

Cheers!