Sheeet Negroni! That's All You Had to Say!

Equal parts

Gin

Campari

Sweet Vermouth

Let's not mess about. I could tell you 25ml of each, 30ml of each... 100ml of each if it may have been one of those days.

Just have each part equal and follow the instructions below. I won't ask any questions, you won't tell me any lies.

Similar to the Old Fashioned recipe, this one comes down to the ice.

Add the 3 ingredients to a mixing glass

Add a few cubes of ice

Stir

Add a load more ice

Stir until cold

Strain into a Rocks Glass with a massive ice cube in it

Garnish with orange peel, if you have the time; chuck in a wedge of orange if you don't

I think it should be apparent by now that I love simple cocktails.

If you show me a menu of 2 cocktails, one with 9 ingredients and one with 2, I am always going to pick the simplest.

There's a couple of reasons for this:

1) Time reading the ingredients is time I could be spending drinking. I came for the booze, not to learn

2) While there are some incredible cocktails out there with quite a few ingredients (I know, I made some of them), someone pouring a couple of things in a glass, stirring it and it tasting delicious is basically magic to me

3) Those 2 ingredients will, inevitably, be 2 types of booze. That's mathematically more fun

The thing I love most about these simple cocktails is the scope of creativity you can bring to them when you make them.

Not a big gin fan? Ditch the gin, chuck in 35ml Bourbon (even more alcohol!) and have a Boulevardier instead.

Too bitter for you? Try Aperol instead of Campari

Day drinking and you're not a hard-boiled detective in the 50s? Make it an Americano

Not the coffee (you can have a coffee instead if you want, I don't judge... much). The Americano is Il Padre to the Negroni's Piccolo Bastardo Forte (thank you Google Translate).

All you need is Campari, Sweet Vermouth, ice and soda water; garnish with an orange slice.

The point is that a good classic cocktail is a great starting point for putting your own stamp on a drink; there's so many directions you can go.

When I was working in a bar over Negroni Week (that's how good this cocktail is, your birthday is one day; this drink gets a week), I designed a menu of 3 different Negronis.

It went from the Classic; imaginatively titled "I Love Negronis"; to a White Negroni, "Negronis Aren't My Thing".

I know what you're thinking, I'm well good at naming things. Give me your firstborn, I'll name the heck out of it... I'm thinking Burt. All kids who are brought to me are now called Burt.

I'm not putting the recipes on this post. I've given you 3 recipes already, I need you to come back at some point.

However you enjoy them, classic cocktails are classics for a reason. And you look infinitely cooler drinking a Negroni compared to drinking a Woo Woo.