One from the front porch. I’ve given up on the grape vine and will hopefully be giving it to a friend in the spring who has more space than I do. I’m letting the birds have free access to it this year. The catbirds and robins are there most of the daytime and the cardinals move in at dusk.
The first bottle we cracked open from the intial booze spree was Campari. Now, I had never had it before, but the citrus description made it sound interesting and I decided to give it a go even though I don’t like gin a whole lot. I figured that the rest of the ingredients would cover the gin tastes I don’t care for.
NEGRONI from The Drunken Botanist
1 ounce gin (I used Bulldog here, the only gin I’ve found so far that I like.)
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari
Orange peelShake all of the ingredients except the orange peel over ice and serve in a cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange peel.
This cocktail mixes up into the lovely red drink you see above. I can’t be buggered to put in orange peels, especially when I don’t have any. It turns out that the non-gin ingredients do very much cover the taste of the gin, but it also turns out that I don’t care much for the taste of the other ingredients! Especially Campari. Campari, in my opinion, tastes like chewing on orange pith. It’s a funky, bitter taste that lingered through a 40 minute walk with my dog. Bleck!
Jason seemed to like it more than I did, but he also says that the next time he makes it, he’s going to probably use about half of the Campari. He also did a bit of research and found a Negroni recipe that includes a bit of salt. Salt does some good things for bitter flavors, so I may try that to see if it makes it more palatable. Otherwise, I suspect it’s going to be given to a friend of mine.
We also bought a bottle of Punt e Mes vermouth upon book suggestion and discovered it has the exact same bitter finish to it. Something to be aware of when buying vermouth.