Easy to make and refreshingly bitter, the Negroni is said
to have been invented in Florence by the dauntless Italian Count Camillo
Negroni in the early 20th century. While at Bar Casoni in
Florence, he demanded that the bartender strengthen his favorite cocktail,
the Americano, by replacing the usual soda water with gin. To
further differentiate the drink, the bartender also employed an orange
peel rather than the typical lemon peel.
It’s a widely accepted tale, and one that is documented in
“Sulle Tracce del Conte: La Vera Storia del Cocktail Negroni”,
which was written by Lucca Picchi, the head bartender at
Caffe Rivoire in Florence, Italy, and translates to “In the
Footsteps of the Count: The True Story of the Negroni Cocktail”. The
count’s fateful substitution resulted in one of the most popular stirred
drinks in history, as the Negroni sits next to the Martini and
Manhattan in the pantheon of classics. It also launched a
thousand riffs, and today the Negroni can be found in myriad iterations at
restaurants and cocktail bars around the world.
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