Campari & Soda
Campari & Soda has been served in Italian bars since the late nineteenth century and has never needed improving. Two ingredients, built in a glass, consumed before a meal. The simplicity is not a limitation. It is the entire point. Campari is a sufficiently complex ingredient that adding anything beyond soda water and ice risks obscuring the thing that makes it worth drinking in the first place. The drink became a fixture of Italian aperitivo culture in part because of a single piece of industrial design. In 1932, the Campari company commissioned Fortunato Depero, a Futurist artist, to design a single-serve glass bottle that could be sold pre-mixed and carried to a table without a bartender. The Campari Soda bottle, with its inverted cone shape, became one of the most recognisable pieces of drinks packaging in Europe and introduced the combination to a generation of drinkers who might never have ordered it at a bar. The pre-mixed version is a convenience product. The version built fresh in a glass with quality ice and the correct ratio is a different experience. The ratio matters more than it appears to. Too much soda and the bitterness of the Campari becomes dilute and loses its structure. Too little and the drink is heavy and slow. The correct proportion allows the Campari to lead clearly while the soda lifts and extends it into something sessionable.
Glassware: Highball Glass
Garnish: Orange slice
Ingredients
90ml
Well chilled before pouring. Add last, pour gently down the side of the glass, and stir once. Aggressive pouring will flatten the carbonation before the first sip.
1 scoop
Fill the glass fully before building. Large clean cubes melt slowly and keep the drink cold without diluting it prematurely.
1 slice
A single fresh slice placed on the rim. Provides an aromatic complement to the Campari and a visual reference to the drink's Italian origins.
Instructions
Fill a highball or rocks glass fully with large cubed ice.
Pour the Campari over the ice.
Pour the chilled soda water gently down the side of the glass to preserve the carbonation.
Stir once slowly with a bar spoon to integrate.
Place the orange slice on the rim and serve immediately.
Expert Tip
Pour the soda water down the inside wall of the glass rather than directly over the ice. It loses significantly less carbonation that way and arrives at the first sip with the effervescence intact. One slow stir is enough. Two is one too many.
Flavour Profile
The Origin
Campari was created by Gaspare Campari in Milan in the 1860s, a bitter liqueur made from a proprietary blend of herbs, spices, and fruit that has never been publicly disclosed. From its earliest years it was served with soda water, a combination that suited the Italian appetite for something bitter and effervescent before a meal. The pairing was not invented so much as arrived at naturally, the way most genuinely enduring drinks combinations are.
The moment that fixed the Campari & Soda in the cultural landscape came in 1932, when the company commissioned Fortunato Depero, an artist associated with the Italian Futurist movement, to design a single-serve pre-mixed bottle. The resulting design, an inverted truncated cone in distinctive dark glass, became one of the most recognisable pieces of drinks packaging in twentieth-century Europe. It made the combination portable, democratic, and ubiquitous. It also introduced the proportions that the company considered correct and that remain the reference point for the built version served in bars today.
The Case for Simplicity
There is a version of the Campari & Soda that appears in bars where someone has decided the drink needs improving: a squeeze of orange, a dash of bitters, a slice of grapefruit. These additions are not improvements. Campari is a drink built from over sixty botanical ingredients, the precise composition of which remains a trade secret. It is already a complex product. What it needs from soda water is lift, length, and dilution to a point where the bitterness is accessible without being confrontational. Nothing more is required and adding more risks covering the very thing that makes Campari worth drinking.
The Campari & Soda is one of a small number of two-ingredient drinks that demonstrates how much a single well-made ingredient can achieve when it is not crowded.
The Ratio
The conventional Campari to soda ratio in Italian bar culture runs broadly between one part Campari to two parts soda, which is the proportion used here. The pre-mixed Depero bottle contained a slightly higher proportion of Campari relative to soda, reflecting the intention that it would be consumed quickly and cold rather than sipped slowly over ice. The version built in a glass over a full scoop of large cubed ice is designed for the latter. The additional soda volume accounts for the dilution that the ice introduces over the course of the drink.
If the finished drink tastes thin or the bitterness has disappeared, reduce the soda. If the bitterness is too forward and the drink feels heavy and unrefreshing, add a little more. Those two adjustments cover every version of this drink that falls short.
How to Serve It
Built over ice in a highball or rocks glass, with a single gentle stir and an orange slice on the rim. Serve it cold and serve it before food. The Campari & Soda is not a drink for after dinner or for slow evening consumption. It is an aperitivo in the strictest sense of the word: a drink designed to open the appetite and prepare the palate for what follows. Treat it that way and it performs exactly as intended.
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