I don't get out much, so forgive me if I illustrate this post with a collage of Seattle Negronis that's a couple of years old. Last year, you may recall, marked the inauguration of a cocktail promotion called "Negroni Week." The 2015 edition starts Monday, June 1st, and over 3,000 bars worldwide have signed up, distributing swag like coasters and T-shirts, and promising to make a donation to a local charity for every cocktail sold.
There's a list of participating bars & lounges here; literally dozens of them are in Seattle. Example: the redoubtable Jamie Bourdeau at Canon is offering a trio of experimental Negronis made with gin, rum, and rye. In Oregon, Jacobsen Sea Salt has come up with a Campari-flavored cocktail salt. (Spare me "Negroni Soap," please.) And just in time, the venerable Gaz Regan has come out with another book of Negroni lore and recipes,
The indispensable ingredient of the true Negroni is, of course, Campari itself, first concocted in Milano in the 19th century by Gaspare Campari, a pharmacist in Milan. In those days, pharmacists were the folks who knew something about distilling and had access to exotic herbs. Today, any high school kid with a chemistry set could do it, but the Europeans were the ones, back in the day, who invented the macerations and tinctures, the amari and digestivi, that we still enjoy today.
My own quest, as I've written often enough over the years, stems from an increasing disappointment in that old standby itself, Campari. What used to be an exotic, aromatic bitter has turned into a syrup with a cloying sweetness that hides its essential, bitter character. Besides, the dumbed-down version sold in the US isn't as strong as what's sold in Europe or at the Duty Free stores.
Campari Group has slowly taken over a big chunk of the international beverage business. It now owns Cynar, Aperol and Cinzano, Skyy and XO vodkas, Wild Turkey, Appleton rum, Frangelico liqueur, among many other brands, and ranks as the sixth largest drinks company in the world. In the first half of 2013, it took in nearly 700 million euros. Now if only someone would give them a kick in the pants and restore the unique character of their flagship drink!
And even though Campari tastes more syrupy and less distinctively bitter than when I first encountered it, I still enjoy one (maybe two) every day. Usually as an aperitif, but occasionally as an after-dinner drink. On a warm spring night, at a sidewalk café in Belltown, surrounded by high-rise condos, with music leaking out of the windows, just watching the passing parade (couples, families, strollers, dogs), with this quintessentially urban drink in your hand, I can even imagine that Seattle is a real city.
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