The History of the Negroni Cocktail

The Negroni got its start in Italy. According to legend, Count Camillo Negroni invented the drink when he ordered an Americano made with gin in place of the usual soda water at the Caffè Casoni in Florence in 1919. It quickly caught on, and long after the drink was invented, the Negroni family founded the Negroni distillery. There, they began producing a ready-to-drink version of the Negroni cocktail called Antico Negroni 1919. One of the first documented references to the Negroni came from Orson Welles, who traveled to Rome in 1947 and told the Coshocton Tribune about it. In 1967, the first variation of the Negroni was mixed in a bar in Milan. Called the Negroni Sbagliato (meaning “mistaken Negroni”), it was made with Prosecco instead of gin. According to the story, it was created by accident when a customer ordered a Negroni and an overworked bartender accidentally used Prosecco to make it. However, the customer loved it, and the variation soon became popular. In 2002, British cocktail expert Wayne Collins created the White Negroni by using Lillet Blanc and Suze in place of sweet vermouth and Campari. In 2010, Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon became one of the first people to barrel-age cocktails and as part of his work, he created the Barrel-Aged Negroni using whiskey barrels from New York’s Tuthilltown distillery. National Negroni Week was introduced by Campari and Imbibe magazine in 2013 and has since become an annual celebration each June. Today, the Negroni remains one of the most popular cocktails in the world.