Negroni Trivia | 30 facts about the summer cocktail

Negroni is the ultimate summer cocktail, especially for those people who don’t really appreciate sweet alcoholic beverages.

Let’s find out more about it!

1. The Negroni is a popular Italian cocktail.
2. It is made of one part gin, one part vermouth rosso (red, semi-sweet), and one part Campari, garnished with orange peel.
3. It is considered an apéritif.
4. Most of the people though simply call it a cocktail.
5. A traditionally made Negroni is stirred, not shaken.
6. Also, it is built over ice in an old-fashioned or rocks glass and garnished with a slice of orange.
7. Outside of Italy an orange peel is often used in place of an orange slice
8. The drink’s specific origins are unknown.
9. Despite that the most widely reported account is that it was first mixed in Florence, Italy, in 1919, at Caffè Casoni (formerly Caffè Giacosa), on Via de’ Tornabuoni and now called Caffè Roberto Cavalli.
10. Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni concocted it by asking the bartender, Fosco Scarselli, to strengthen his favorite cocktail, the Americano, by adding gin rather than the normal soda water.
11. The bartender also added an orange garnish rather than the typical lemon garnish of the Americano to signify that it was a different drink.
12. After the success of the cocktail, the Negroni family founded Negroni Distillerie in Treviso, Italy.
13. They produced a ready-made version of the drink, sold as Antico Negroni 1919.
14. One of the earliest reports of the drink came from Orson Welles in correspondence with the Coshocton Tribune while working in Rome on Cagliostro in 1947.
15. He described a new drink called the Negroni, “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”
16. Cocktail historian David Wondrich researched Camillo Negroni, whose status as a count is questionable, but whose grandfather, Luigi Negroni, was indeed a count.
17. Descendants of General Pascal Olivier de Negroni, Count de Negroni, say he was the Count Negroni who invented the drink in 1857 in Senegal.
18. A Corse-Matin Sunday Edition article from 1980 says he invented the drink around 1914.
19. An article in the New Hampshire Union Leader reported on the controversy
20. There are many Negroni variations such as Americano, Cardinale, Old Pal etc
21. Four times in a row Negroni has been voted as the second best cocktail according to the Drinks International cocktail review of bars all over the world.
22. Although the classic recipe to make this drink is simple, it has complex flavours and looks great too.
23. In 2013, Imbibe Magazine launched Negroni Week as a celebration of one of the world’s great cocktails and an effort to raise money for charitable causes.
24. In 2018 Imbibe teamed up with Campari to present Negroni Week 2018. From 4th to 10th June 2018, bars around the world took part in Negroni Week, inviting people to celebrate the classic cocktail while also raising money for some great charitable causes.
25. Aspri spirits, the importer of Campari in India was instrumental in making India the 2nd ranking country in Asia to celebrate the weeklong event across a number of bars in the country. Seven Days, three ingredients and one simple way, to give back. That’s what Negroni week is all about.
26. Negroni week is usually celebrated for a week every year in the beginning of the month of June.
27. The Negroni is believed to have been invented in Florence, Italy, in a café previously called Café Casoni. Now, the supposed birthplace of the famed cocktail goes by Giacosa Café.
28. Although the cafe has since closed, fans of the drink can still visit a plaque that was installed in the former birthplace of the Negroni. The commemorative plaque celebrates the 100th birthday of the iconic cocktail.
29. Famed author Ernest Hemingway was a noted fan of the drink
30. The author is known for penning famous books like “The Old Man and the Sea” and “The Sun Also Rises.” He is widely known for being a big fan of the Negroni. The author even mentioned the cocktail in his book “Across the River and Into the Trees,” which at one point reads, “They were drinking Negronis, a combination of two sweet vermouths and seltzer water.” Although he named the Negroni, it seems the recipe he mentioned could be for an Americano.