To promote the Game Of Thrones spinoff television series House of the Dragon, lead actresses Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy sat down to interview each other. After some light banter, Cooke asks a more serious question: what’s your drink of choice? D’Arcy answers: “a negroni.” Cooke agrees, but D’Arcy immediately adds, “Sbagliato,” pauses, and says, “With prosecco in it.”
The clip soon made its way to TikTok where it became a viral sensation. Suddenly everyone was talking about Negroni Sbagliato. Translated as an “incorrect” negroni, it is made by replacing gin with bubbly wine, usually prosecco, along with equal parts of Campari and sweet vermouth. The original drink, according to Matt Hranek, author of The Negroni: A Love Affair with a Classic Cocktail, was in fact invented by accident at the famed Bar Basso in Milan. A bartender there mistakenly grabbed the bottle of prosecco and replaced the gin. Before he could correct the mistake, the customer decided to taste the happy accident, and the sbagliato was born.
The sudden popularity of the Negroni Sbagliato is just the latest episode of a long and sordid history of the Negroni family of cocktails. A correctly mixed negroni combines equal parts of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth. The traditional garnish is a twist of orange peel.
The key ingredient in negroni is Campari, a bitter aperitif similar to Aperol and Cynar, all broadly considered amaro. In a pinch, any of these bitter Italian liqueurs can be mixed and matched. Craft Negroni variants made with small batch amaro are not uncommon either, but the most traditional recipe calls for Campari.
The original Campari was invented in 1860 by Gaspare Campari. The bright red aperitif had a secret ingredient back then: bugs. The distinct color originally came from the carminic acid collected from Cochineal insects for natural red number 4. The acid is extracted from their bodies and used in food dyes and lipsticks, but Campari no longer uses insect-based dyes.
The first cocktail mixed with Campari was the Milano-Torino, the grandfather of the Negroni. This drink combined equal parts of the bitter Campari with the sweetness of vermouth. Italians often consume bitter drinks as after-dinner digestifs, and Milano-Torino was popular for the purpose.
Meanwhile, natural sparkling mineral water had long been a popular curative drink, but in the 19th century, several discoveries finally allowed artificial carbonation and soda water was born. Perhaps nowhere embraced the soda water fad more than America. Pharmacies began opening up soda fountains where customers could purchase an artificially carbonated drink with flavors like vanilla and medicinal drinks like Coca-Cola. Unsurprisingly, when American travelers showed up in Europe, they preferred adding carbonated water to the Milano-Torino, and so the Americano was born.
While these early Campari cocktails were sipped in bars across Milan and northern Italy, Count Camillo Negroni was busy fathering illegitimate children. Known as a womanizer and playboy, he fled to Canada rather than take responsibility for his heirs. There he took up a life of adventure, became a cowboy, and set up a ranch. Negroni eventually returned to Italy. Despite his years on the frontier, or perhaps because of them, he still liked to drink heavily. One night in 1919 at Caffè Casoni in Florence he ordered an Americano—but wanting something stronger, insisted on adding gin instead of soda. The Negroni was born.
Other mythologies surround the creation of the Negroni. Another version of the story goes that a different Count, Pascal Olivier de Negroni, invented the drink for his bride while stationed in Senegal. And a third man with the name Negroni, Guglielmo, launched the Negroni Antica Distilleria in 1919. Negroni Antica Distillaria produces aperitifs and grappa and sells a liqueur known as Old 1919, supposedly based on the original recipe invented by Guglielmo.
By the mid-century, the negroni had become widely available in Italy, and in 1947, Orson Welles, the director, discovered the drink while shooting Black Magic in Rome. He praised the drink’s bitters as good for his liver while conceding the gin was probably not as good.
However, by the 1970s, the negroni had transitioned from a trendy cocktail to a gauche club drink. The already strong drink was made stronger at Italian discotheques that offered double and triple servings in highball glasses. The Negroni was suddenly the go-to drink to get drunk. This shift might have paved the way for the Negroni Sbagliato, invented in 1967 since prosecco has the lower alcohol by volume.
The Negroni remained something of a niche drink in America, popular with Italian Americans, but otherwise not particularly well known. Then along came the penultimate episode of The Sopranos. In the 85th episode of the show, Bobby Baccalieri is assassinated in a hobby store as he is about to purchase a rare toy train. Bobby holds the model of the Blue Comet, the express train that once ran from New York to Atlantic City. He fantasizes about traveling in it and describes sitting in the club car, sipping a Negroni.
That episode aired in 2007, just as the craft cocktail revolution had taken off. By that point, Negroni was fast becoming a favorite of bartenders looking to make a mark on traditional drinks. Campari’s bitter flavor offered an easy profile to mimic or mix with, and bartenders around the world concocted variations including tequila, Cynar, fernet, and coffee.
Few of these variations are quite as iconic as the White Negroni. The white Negroni was created out of necessity in the French town of Médoc. As Robert Simonson explains over at Punch, Bartender Wayne Collins and Nick Blacknell, a director at Plymouth Gin, were trying to make a traditional negroni while traveling to a trade show. Since they were in a small village in France, they lacked the necessary Italian ingredients. Instead, Collins used French substitutes combining Suze, a bitter French aperitif, and Lillet Blanc, a sweet wine aperitif. Thanks to Blacknell, they had plenty of Plymouth Gin. The white negroni has since gone on to become a staple drink in the United States.
Finally, there is one distant cousin of the Negroni worth mentioning: the boulevardier. A similar drink made from equal parts Campari, vermouth, and bourbon or rye, it was created by an American living in Paris. Erskine Gwynne ran a magazine by the same name. Bourbon or rye tends to add sweetness to the cocktail.
The negroni has grown in popularity in recent years in no small part from the assistance of the Campari Group, the multinational corporation of spirits behind the Campari brand. In 2011 they celebrated the Year of the Negroni, and in 2013 launched Negroni Week, an ongoing celebration now in its 10th year. And adding to the popularity, in April 2020, while the world was in lockdown, Stanley Tucci posted a video on Instagram. He was making a Negroni for his wife and offered instructions on mixing the drink.
No doubt bartenders will be fulfilling Negroni Sbagliato orders for months or even years, but there is no better time than a chilly evening for the warmth of a Negroni no matter how you mix it. Winter is coming, and Negroni season is upon us.
Ian MacAllen
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. He is a writer, editor, and graphic designer living in Brooklyn. Connect with him at IanMacAllen.com or on Twitter @IanMacAllen.