The Spirits #152: The Negroni Sbagliato

With prosecco in it

Friends, there’s a special offer over at THE SPIRITS STORE Add all of the constituent ingredients of the Gin & It to your basket - that’s Umbrella gin, Caelestiale Italian vermouth and Social bitters - and add the code BITTERS at checkout. You’ll get the bitters for free. There’s no P&P until Christmas, either. That’s a great deal. Just remember to add that code, BITTERS.

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~ THE NEGRONI SBAGLIATO ~

30ml Campari
30ml Italian vermouth
~60ml sparkling wine

It’s not so hard, this one. Fill a tumbler with ice. Throw in the Campari and vermouth. Top with sparkling wine. Give it a stir and garnish with orange zest.

Some Sbagliato notes:

1) This famous cocktail is really a Negroni with spumante (or more commonly, prosecco) in place of the gin. There’s an apocryphal story behind it. The drink also enjoyed a viral moment in 2022. Be that as it may, it’s an excellent festive drink. Slightly less alcoholic than a Negroni and much more celebratory. Also, much classier than an Aperol Spritz and just a bit richer than a Campari Spritz too.

2) The convention is to serve this down, Negroni style. But I’ve always served it up in flutes - or even in wine glasses, with ice - and no one has complained. It’s extremely good with alt-Camparis too - I’ve had great results with Khoosh bitters and Dr. Hostetter’s too - and I think benefits an extra dash of Angostura and maybe just a tiny squeeze of lemon juce.

3) It’s an excellent party stand by, too. Here’s what you do. You tell all your guests to bring sparkling wine. And you prepare a big jug of 50/50 Campari/Italian vermouth (this is known as a Milano-Torino) and chill it in advance of everyone arriving. Have some ice and garnishes on hand. Then, when they step in the door, you can pour them this extremely simple drink with the minimum of fuss. Oh and should they want something lighter, the Milano-Torino mix can become an Americano… and should they want something heavier, it can become a Boulevardier… You get the picture.

4) I am in fact semi-co-hosting a party tonight! Wish me luck. In honour of this occasion I have unlocked my party planning guide, here:

🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂

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🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🛒 Running low on booze? Visit the SPIRITS STORE.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here.
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.
🏥 And here is a list of trusted charities who are helping people in Gaza.
🍒 And here is my favourite poem about maraschino cherries.
📱And if you like The Spirits, do please forward this to your friends.

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Oh and just so you know… I’ve spent some time bringing my voluminous index of ingredients fully up-to-date this week. There are over 150 fully-tested recipes here - plus in-depth guides to interesting bottles. So please: enter the rabbit hole.

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PLAYLIST

Here are my favourite songs of 2024. They are not exclusively songs that are brand new this year, though there are plenty of those. But they are all songs that were new to me this year - and generally by artists that were new to me (or, at least, that I heard in a new light). It’s a fairly long list - 52, one for each week! - and I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of sense. But it makes a sort of sense to me, pushing forwards and backwards and inside out, because, well, I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All. I hope you find something you enjoy.

Favourite albums of this year? Hmm. Cindy Lee (not on Spotify), Arooj Aftab, Chanel Beads, Jessica Pratt, Previous Industries making a late surge.

Favourite discoveries? Milton Nascimento, Irene Kral, Gun Cub, Azeri-Balkan guitar gods, Sarah Vaughan.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of past playlists.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

I’m fascinated by the case of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old who assassinated Brian Thompson, CEO of the healthcare monopoly, United, in New York recently. The kid has become something of a folk hero in the US and it’s not really so surprising. The story has as its base elements three of those aspects of American life that no one outside or perhaps even inside America truly understands: the insane tolerance of guns; the healthcare system that seems so callously cruel by design; and the dominance of corporate monopolies with their utterly peverse incentive structures. Thompson’s “success” as CEO basically relied on how many people he could deny life-saving treatment. The furore arrives at an interesting inflection point too. It’s really not clear at this point whether the incoming Trump administration is going to break the stranglehold of these corporations - or just hand them the keys to the entire country. I feel like this might prove to be some sort of turning point though which way, I can’t say. Anyway. Cory Doctorow had the most scintillating take on all of that and I can’t stop thinking about this piece. (Pluralistic)

And because that’s a lot to be thinking about! Here’s Henry Jeffreys on how great sherry is (Drinking Culture)

And Elif Batuman, a wonderful writer, on everything that happened in 1924 (The Elif Life)

And Ameila Tait on snackfishing (Wired)

And of course I’ve been poring through the BEST OF YEAR lists, too (Pitchfork)

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SHOPPING LIST

OK next week, you’re going to need… Brandy, lemons and dessert wine. Sauternes is probably best if you can stretch? Riesling auslese would be great too or Tokaji from Hungary. More affordable is Jurancon or maybe a muscat. Just something rich and honeyed and delicious and golden. You can get this stuff by the half bottle and actually it keeps much better than regular white wine.
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