Enzoni

Negroni

A Negroni is 30ml each of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, stirred with ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained over fresh ice in a rocks glass, with an orange peel expressed over the top. About 2.4 UK units. The measures are the IBA’s; the IBA builds the drink in the glass and garnishes it with half an orange slice. The usual story puts it in Florence in 1919, at the Caffè Casoni, where the bartender Fosco Scarselli is said to have replaced the soda in Count Camillo Negroni’s Americano with gin. No record from the time backs it. Equal parts of the three first appear in a French bar book of 1929, and the name Negroni reaches print for a cocktail in 1947. Each third has a job. Gin gives strength and juniper, Campari bitterness and orange, and the vermouth body and sugar. With no juice or soda in the glass, a tired vermouth shows at once.

Jasmine

A Jasmine is 45ml of London Dry gin, 22.5ml of fresh lemon juice, 7.5ml of Cointreau or another triple sec and 7.5ml of Campari, shaken hard and double strained into a chilled coupe with a lemon twist. About 2.3 UK units. It is pale pink, sharp and lightly bitter, and most people who taste it say grapefruit. Paul Harrington made it in 1993 at Townhouse, a restaurant in Emeryville, California, for his friend Matt Jasmin, and misspelled the name. He started from the Pegu Club, used Campari in place of its Angostura and lemon in place of its lime. His 1998 book, Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century, carried the recipe to bartenders well beyond the Bay. The measures are Harrington’s: a quarter of an ounce, about 7.5ml, each of Cointreau and Campari. Two small measures of orange liqueur and bitter liqueur against the lemon are what make the drink read as grapefruit.

Red Hook

A Red Hook is 60ml of rye whiskey, 22.5ml of Punt e Mes and 15ml of maraschino liqueur, stirred over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled Nick and Nora glass with a cocktail cherry. About 3.2 UK units. Enzo Errico created it in 2003 at Milk & Honey, Sasha Petraske’s bar in New York, and named it after Red Hook, the old waterfront district of Brooklyn. It sits between the Manhattan and the Brooklyn: rye from both, maraschino from the Brooklyn, and Punt e Mes, a bitter-edged Italian vermouth, doing the work of sweet vermouth and the bitter Amer Picon at once. The published recipe takes 15ml of Punt e Mes. We pour 22.5ml, which keeps the bitterness in step with a maraschino measure twice the size of the Brooklyn’s.