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The negroni is a cocktail that has grown huge in popularity in recent years and for very good reason. The balance of bitter, sweet, herbaceous and boozy is truly intoxicating. Plus it’s one of the easiest cocktails to make.

But behind its simplicity, the negroni is also a wonderfully adaptable canvas that you can add to, take away from and change ingredients with some startlingly tasty results.

For more cocktail recipes and tips on how to set up for a baller of a cocktail party, check out our cocktail guide ebook here!

1. Amplify Your Gin

Gin is a complicated spirit. Depending on what the distiller has made it with, your gin might be sweet, spicy, salty or herbaceous. It might be a powerful gin or something that is gentler and floral.

All too often, we follow the ‘equal parts’ rule of a negroni too hard and fast, and the gin drowns in the other flavours.

Adding 1.5 or even double the amount of gin to your negroni allows the gin to sing louder and bring some of its subtler flavours to the fore.

Banks & Solander’s Ora Gin has delicate Japanese flavours of kombu, sake, ginger and miso that really shine in a gin X2 negroni.

2. Cut The Campari

Campari is an incredible drink, but at the end of the day it’s still an amaro—a bitter aperitivo with a strong orange flavoured backbone. There are lots of amaros out there worth playing with that can add different things to your negroni.

Aperol is lighter and sweeter than Campari, and an easy option. However, the lesser-known but equally good Select is somewhere between the two.

Amaro Montenegro instead of Campari (a ‘Montenegroni’ to some) makes a slightly sweeter and more citrusy drink. Swapping out Campari for Cynar (it’s called a Cin-Cyn by the way) is gentler on the palate than Campari.

Australian craft distillers have also thrown their hats in the ring with the likes of Rhubi Mistelle made from rhubarb and Ester Distillery’s Alternativo Aperitivo. Rhubi is an intensely bright aperitivo that’s sweeter than it is bitter, and Ester’s efforts are simply on point for a superb classic Aussie negroni.

3. Look Beyond London Dry

There are so many styles of gin around that make such a difference to a negroni. Try coffee-laced gins, barrel-aged gins or berry-flavoured gins like sloe gin to bend the flavours of your negroni.

This is the easiest change you can make to a negroni in your search for your favourite recipe.

4. Swap Out The Gin

Don’t get stuck in the gin rut with negronis. There are lots of other options. Using whisky instead of gin (known as a boulevardier) is excellent, though you’ll need to adjust the other ingredients a little depending on the whisky.

For something a little different, give rum a try. Its natural sweetness and spiciness are perfect matches for the bittersweet of the other ingredients.

For something a lot different, try mezcal as a gin replacement. This smoky unctuous spirit turns the average negroni into a deep, resinous, sophisticated drink perfect for sipping.

5. Turn It White

For most of us, a negroni’s trademark is its deep red colour. But what if you change all of that?

Swap out the red (sweet) vermouth for Lillet Blanc (you can also try mixing together dry vermouth and white vermouth) and instead of the bright red of Campari, use a bitter gentian liqueur like Suze, Salers or Aveze.

You’re left with a clear, slightly amber cocktail, but still undeniably one with all the hallmarks of one of the world’s great drinks.

Bonus: Smoke It Up

Adding smoke to a negroni not only amps up the flavours, it also adds a fun bit of food theatre to things.

I love my Smoking Cocktail kit. You put the smoker over your glass, add wood chips and light them. The smoke fills the glass and infuses with your negroni, and when you lift the smoker off the glass, smoke drifts out. Very dramatic!

The post How To Upgrade Your Negroni appeared first on Mr and Mrs Romance.

With cocktails, there’s a golden rule of three that most great drinks follow: spirit, sweet and bitter. Together these elements create balance, and the negroni – with it’s equal parts gin, vermouth and Campari – has that in spades.

But with so many gins around, there are myriad ways of changing the flavour, look and feel of this excellent cocktail.

Here are 5 of our favourites.

5 gins to mix up your negroni

We’ve chosen these five gins because they all offer something unique, but the basic negroni recipe is infinitely adjustable.

A different vermouth, more Campari, a splash of soda on top to create a spritz… your options are only limited by your imagination. And your bar stock!

Stone Pine Orange Blossom Gin

This remarkable Aussie gin from Stone Pine in Bathurst NSW is one of our favourites. Juniper forward but with a delicious floral background, this gin in a negroni is amazing. There’s even a slight savoury note at the end.

The distiller Ian Glen forages the orange blossoms from trees in the Western Plains near his distillery and includes native botanicals like pink finger limes and lemon myrtle to amp up the citrus.

Get your Stone Pine Orange Blossom Gin here.

Bombay Sapphire Sunset special edition gin

New to the Australian market, Bombay Sapphire’s Sunset gin is less grassy and a little spicier than the regular one.

In a negroni, this gin’s mandarin peel and white cardamon play really well with the Campari, and the mellow turmeric works with the red vermouth, all to create a delicious cocktail.

Get your Bombay Sapphire Sunset at BWS or Dan’s here.

Hayman’s Sloe Gin

A true spirit of the English winter, making sloe gin is a labour of love. Sloe bushes have huge spikes to protect the little blue berries, but it’s worth the effort.

In a negroni, the sharp yet somehow sweet edge to Hayman’s classic dry gin adds a wonderful dimension.

Get your Hayman’s Sloe Gin in bottle shops nationally.

If you want an excellent Aussie sloe gin, get yourself a bottle of Brookie’s here.

Prohibition Shiraz Barrel Gin

There’s barrel-aged gin and then there’s this stroke of genius. Prohibition have used ex-bourbon barrels that were then used for Barossa Shiraz to age their whopping 60%ABV gin.

It’s not only given the spirit a beautiful amber glow but also an earthy, fruity flavour. In a negroni, Shiraz Barrel Gin adds so many levels it’s almost a different drink, and the higher alcohol content changes the texture too.

Buy your Prohibition Shiraz Barrel Gin in its beautiful bottle here.

Warner’s Rhubarb Gin

Husband-and-wife distillers Tom and Tina Warner from the Midlands in the UK were really the first to bring out a pink gin.

Their Rhubarb Gin shook the gin world to its foundations, especially because the colouring comes from the use of fresh rhubarb juice in the distilling process.

It gives the gin a sharp refreshing tang, and in a negroni you’ll find it elevates the herbaceous element of the Campari and pushes back against the vermouth well too.

Get your Warner’s Rhubarb Gin here.

Negronis are a lot of fun to play around with and it just shows how altering one element can change this drink so much.

In fact, swapping one ingredient out of this harmonious trio for something else is a neat trick to creating other cocktails completely.

Check out our cheat’s guide to cocktail making and our free downloadable here.

The post 5 gins to mix up your old negroni appeared first on Mr and Mrs Romance.

Day 2 of 30 Cocktails in 30 Days Challenge: the Negroni

From the moment we first thought up this challenge, Mrs Romance has been on my back to include the negroni. It’s one of those moments in a relationship when you discover just how persistent can be!

Mrs R’s obsession, however, is truly founded. It’s delicious. Sweet and bitter orange, lots of ice and a dry, sharp balancing aftertaste. It’s the perfect aperitif.

How to make a negroni

Here’s what you need:

For each drink

• 1 measure Campari
• 1 measure sweet vermouth
• 1 measure gin
• Lots of ice
• Orange peel to garnish
• Old fashioned glass, stirrer

Here’s what you do:

1. Put the ice in the glass – enough to ¾ fill the glass.
2. Build the drink over the ice in the order of ingredients.
3. Stir well and garnish with a strip of orange juice curled over the rim of the glass. Straw is optional.

Alternatively, if the drink’s too bitter for you, try Aperol instead of Campari. It’s a bit sweeter and less orangey but still delicious. The drink does lose its richness a little but it’s still perfect for a Sunday wind-down or a good start-up drink on a night out.

If you like this cocktail, then you’ll love our ebook How to Host the Perfect Cocktail Party.

It has how-to instructions with pictures on over 35 different cocktails to make. You’ll also find over 10 chapters of top tips and tricks on what you need and what you don’t, guaranteeing your cocktail parties will become the stuff of legends.

Even if you’ve hosted cocktail parties before, the great ideas inside this book will help you perfect and hone your hosting skills. And of course your cocktail repertoire!

Yours for only $9.99, this book will keep your parties fresh and their glasses full!

Click the button below to Buy Now.

Or if you want more information on what our book’s about, head to our Perfect Cocktail Party ebook page.

Images by Mrs Romance.

The post 30 Cocktails in 30 Days – Day 2: the Negroni appeared first on Mr and Mrs Romance.