Remember the Alimony

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. Difford’s Guide gives the most widely reported account: Florence in 1919, at the Casoni Bar, where the bartender Fosco Scarselli is said to have replaced the soda in Count Camillo Negroni’s Americano with gin. The Oxford Companion has the drink named in a surviving letter of October 1920 and then absent under that name until 1947. A French book of 1929 by Alimbau and Milhorat, in the Internet Archive’s scan, gives equal parts of the three as the Campari Mixte. Each third has a job. Gin gives strength and juniper, the red bitter gives bitterness and orange, and the vermouth gives body and sugar. With no juice or soda in the glass, a tired vermouth shows at once.

Bamboo

A Bamboo is 45ml fino sherry and 45ml dry vermouth with two dashes of orange bitters and one of Angostura, stirred over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe, with lemon peel expressed over the top. It is built like a Martini with no spirit in it: two fortified wines, about 1.5 UK units, and around 13% ABV in the glass. William Boothby’s 1908 book credits Louis Eppinger of the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, a German bartender brought to Japan in 1889, as Difford’s Guide, a secondary source, reports. Difford’s finds the drink in newspapers from 1886, three years before Eppinger reached Japan, and an early printed recipe, Thomas Stuart’s of 1904, uses Italian sweet vermouth, which makes the drink now called the Adonis. The sherry decides it. Fino or manzanilla, served cold from a bottle opened in the last few days, gives a dry, saline drink with a nutty edge. The Consejo Regulador gives an open bottle up to a week in the fridge, and one left open longer gives a flat drink, which is usually why a Bamboo disappoints.

Bitter Giuseppe

A Bitter Giuseppe is 60ml of Cynar, 30ml of sweet vermouth, 7.5ml of fresh lemon juice and 3 dashes of orange bitters, stirred over a strip of lemon peel until the glass frosts and strained over one large cube in a rocks glass. About 1.5 UK units, from a Cynar at 16.5% ABV and a vermouth at 16%. Stephen Cole created the drink at The Violet Hour in Chicago in 2007, and Difford’s Guide prints an adapted version of his recipe. Punch calls it a cult favourite among modern amaro cocktails and counts it among the modern drinks that are stirred despite carrying fresh lemon juice. The spirit is an amaro. Cynar is bitter, herbal and faintly savoury, light enough that the drink sits well below a Manhattan in strength. The vermouth rounds the edges, and the lemon is a lift, a measure so small it reads as brightness rather than sourness.

Remember the Maine

Remember the Maine is 60ml of rye, 22.5ml of sweet vermouth and 15ml of dark cherry liqueur, stirred over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe rinsed with 7.5ml of absinthe, with a cherry. Those are the IBA’s measures. About 3.1 UK units. Charles H. Baker Jr. recorded it in The Gentleman’s Companion in 1939, writing that he drank it in Havana in 1933, during the revolution. Punch says the Maine, a US naval ship, was sitting off the coast of Havana in 1898 when it exploded and sank, and that journalists used the phrase “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain” as a rallying cry that would jumpstart the Spanish-American war. It is a Manhattan with the vermouth cut back to make room for dark cherry, and anise from the absinthe on the nose. The rinse is the delicate part: swirled round the glass and poured away, the absinthe scents the drink without taking it over.