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Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. According to the official bartender’s calendar, it’s National Negroni Week. I’ve written about variations of this classic bittersweet cocktail a few times before, but I’ve finally decided on my favorite kind of Negroni: the one that someone else has made for me. To my immense surprise, there’s a way to do that without driving to the neighborhood bar. Let’s pour a Cocktail Collection Negroni (and run through the proper recipe first):
⅓ oz Campari liqueur
⅓ oz Tanqueray gin
⅓ oz Campari Antico
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail vessel with ice. Stir until the outside of the vessel feels cold. Pour into a double old fashioned glass. Add a large ice cube and serve at once.
… and here’s the easy recipe:
Cocktail Collection Tanqueray Negroni
Pour 1 oz of premade cocktail into a glass over ice and serve. Store your bottle in the freezer after opening.
Real talk: I decided to write about premade cocktails this week when I realized I’d be paying $80 for the bottles I’d need to make a Negroni from scratch. Suddenly, the alternative of paying $25 or so for premade Negronis seemed like a good idea. We could chortle about how bad they were before discussing the art of making the good stuff, I could rattle off the history of the Negroni, article done. Easy.
Then I tasted the bottle, and I am stunned. I like it. I like it better than the Negronis I make myself. And it’s not just because I can now afford to take my wife out to dinner on Friday; this is genuinely better than what I pour. I had to taste it a few times before coming to some conclusions. Fortunately, that wasn’t much of a hardship.
One of the main reasons this bottle works is that it doesn’t use “real” Campari. The label reads “Made with Tanqueray London Dry Gin, Vermouth, and Bitter Liquor.” Obviously, the “bitter liquor” is a Campari knockoff. I figured we’d get the cheapest possible Campari taste-alike, rock-bottom vermouth, and call it good. Tanqueray isn’t a name that I associate with top notch gin anymore; why should the rest of the ingredients be any different?
Well, whoever made up this bottle knew their stuff. They took their time to pick a cheap vermouth and a Campari-ish liquor that actually taste good with the Tanqueray. When I’m making a Negroni at the bar, I’m using the house vermouth and a decent bottom shelf gin. But those ingredients don’t necessarily cooperate well. Campari is a bright red liquor that is the epitome of “bittersweet,” and vermouth can be hit or miss. The simple recipe of the Negroni doesn’t give you much room to make corrections. This bottle uses a Campari-like liquor that isn’t quite so bitter, and its herbal notes play well with the Tanqueray. It’s like listening to a decent Jane’s Addiction cover band, instead of watching Perry Farrell and David Navarro get into a fistfight onstage. Better to enjoy the second-best harmonize instead of watching the real deal get into a brawl.
If you choose wisely, there are some very nice bottled and canned cocktails on the market now. (You have to know what you’re doing when you buy them, however. Josh Shapiro learned that the hard way this week.) There’s also a fair amount of garbage. White Claw basically started this category of beverage. I’ve poured a lot of White Claw behind the bar, and let me make this clear: Do Not Drink White Claw. It Is Bad. A friend once described it as tasting like “television static while someone shouts the name of a fruit from the next room.” I disagree — it’s worse than that.
Canned fizzy cocktails are always seltzer and booze in some combination. Even in a can your booze choice does matter. I rather like Bacardi’s canned cocktails, in a lowbrow sort of way. I drank a couple cans of Bacardi’s rum punch this weekend at the Ohio Renaissance Festival. Not something I’d order at the bar, but on a hot, dusty summer day they were great. If a can does not say what sort of liquor is in it, then you’re drinking moonshine. Buyer beware. [Rebecca here with a hard-yes recommendation for Cayman Jack’s canned margaritas et al., which Shy and Son keep bringing home. I assumed they were full of corn syrup and then … “Made with 100% blue agave nectar, natural lime juice, and real cane sugar,” are you kidding me? Sold!]
I did take a look at the Cocktail Collection line of bottled cocktails, and I think the bottle I purchased might be the best one. A bottled cocktail should be made entirely of spirits; bottled citrus juice will decay rapidly over time. This leads to horrors like The Cocktail Collection Cosmopolitan, which lists no cranberry juice in its ingredients. Alarming. Likewise, their espresso martini doesn’t list actual coffee as an ingredient — also a major sin. The Negroni out of this collection might be the lucky find.
Perhaps the best approach is to make your own cocktails in large quantities and bottle them yourself. I’ve taken this approach with martinis before to great success. No matter how you get your bottle of cocktail, store it in the freezer after opening. There’s something magical about pouring a drink that’s colder than ice into a glass; it’s thick and inviting in a way that a regular cocktail can’t match. Experiment, taste, enjoy.
In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!
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You can find me on Threads and Insta at samurai_grog!
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