In the past few years as I’ve explored the world of cocktails, I’ve realized an underlying pattern to most of the cocktails I’ve enjoyed.

To celebrate what is apparently National Negroni Week (how did I not hear about this earlier!?) I’ve decided to share what I’ve stumbled upon.

The original negroni

If you’re not familiar, a classic negroni is an aperitif cocktail with a recipe famous for its simplicity: three distinct ingredients in equal parts.

• Gin
• Sweet Red Vermouth
• Campari

The negroni has many variations I’ve seen. For example, a smokey negroni replaces gin with mezcal. Or use bourbon to make a boulevardier.

Ok, great. Maybe it’s not really that creative to replace gin especially if you don’t like it very much. In fact, I’ve found the flexibility of this recipe goes far beyond these minor adjustments.

The Negroni Pattern, as I call it, is a versatile template to help learn and discover interesting variations in the cocktail world and a secret weapon to invent your own cocktails.

If you look hard enough, you may also find a significant number modern cocktail recipes at your favorite local spot lean on this same combination.

Hiding in plain sight

A couple years ago my wife and I acquired a few nice bottles of liquor from friends moving home to London, who had to leave their nice booze collection behind. This included some interesting brandies, absinthe, and a variety of simple bitters. I always found the alchemy of bartending fascinating, and being a close cousin to the culinary profession it piqued my curiosity. My love of food provided a natural leaping off point to learn the tastes and smells of fine cocktails.

As you enter into the cocktail world, the negroni is an obvious favorite for many. Still I know many people who find the bitter flavors off-putting, so it’s always fun to find other kindred spirits (no pun intended) with a similar love for the sweet, botanical, and bitter combination of a classic negroni.

While exploring the drink menus of my favorite cocktail bars in San Francisco, I started to see a clear connection between many of the drinks. So many of the offerings seem to follow the same theme of three primary ingredients balancing the booziness of a grain alcohol and variations of sweet and herbal wine derivatives with an obscure choice of Italian bitter liquor.

Having stumbled upon this connection, I started to retrace all my favorite drinks. Sure enough every single one could be linked to the same combination:

• Gin/Whiskey
• Vermouth/Sherry
• Italian bitter liqueurs like Campari or Cynar (an Amaro)

When googling Negronis however, I failed to come across any resource that actually explained what was going on. Few articles went beyond explaining the simple swap of the main liquor.

It struck me as odd that no one has laid this out before. Surely Pop Chart Lab has drawn a diagram of this already?

Now, there are many great variations of a negroni documented on blogs such as Negronis Around the World. And I’m pretty sure this pattern is a secret weapon for a couple bartenders at Hideout (in San Francisco) who commonly improvise a playful variety of cocktails that almost always fit this pattern, for example: a quick mix of Bourbon, Sherry, and Zucca Amaro. I’ve even found some unofficial acknowledgement of this that in Negroni Week in San Francisco is well supported by a stunning variety of cocktails that only fleetingly resemble the original idea of a negroni.

At the risk of becoming the John Nash of the cocktail world, I’ve set out to unite these great cocktails under a single model.

So let’s dive deeper into the pattern itself and see how it all comes together.

The core pattern

When learning to cook before college, my mother taught me a simple system to make my own salad dressing to save money:

• an oil
• an acid (e.g. balsamic vinegar)
• flavor/seasoning (e.g. salt & pepper)

(this Intstructables site is evidence my mom is not the only one in on this simple formula)

When discovering the Negroni Pattern, I drew from this same idea —

What are the core ingredients that can be improvised to build from the same ideas that create the negroni?

Thus we have the three fundamental parts of any negroni variant:

• Grain Alcohol
• Fortified Wine
• Italian Bitter Liqueur

*Prosecco, while not a grain alcohol is commonly substituted for gin to make a ‘Sbagliato’
**Chartreuse is not a fortified wine, but seems to work fine in this role

While this list above is not remotely exhaustive, it merely illustrates at a high level the types of alcohol you may find filling each of these roles.

In theory, any combination of the the above three would give you some form of a negroni. But anyone who has spent time with those ingredients will know how different each of them can be.

Notes on applying the pattern

The variety of liquors is absolutely astounding even for the same type of alcohol. Beyond common characteristics like “cheap” or “smooth,” simply saying “sweet red vermouth” doesn’t really narrow it down enough. A lush, sweet Carpano Antica creates a very different profile than a simpler herbaceous Martini Rosso.

The characteristics of each should complement and balance one another. For example, a Fernet (e.g. Fernet Branca) has a very strong flavor such that local happy hours recommend it as a dare as often as a night cap. You will need other strong flavors to stand up to something like that.

Just like jazz, the art in mixing with the Negroni Pattern requires a playful understanding of how these ingredients work together. Simply checking off ingredients that fit without consideration for how they fit together risks dropping a Kenny G when you thought you were getting a Satchmo.

Variations on a theme

On top of the core ingredients you can add your own touch to each cocktail by mixing in half portions of other alcohols: you can add portions of cognac, armagnac, fruit brandy, or even beer to add a touch of creativity to your drinks.

As you discover successful combinations, you may find that even dropping one of the ingredients yields interesting results

• Remove the grain alcohol, you’ve got a thick Dessert cocktail.
• Remove the fortified wine, you’ve got the starter of an eccentric highball.
• Remove the bitter ingredient, and you’ve got something closer to a Manhattan and many many other classic cocktails.

The choices are really up to you, and the Negroni Pattern makes for an easy place to start and a way to hone your expertise. And if you don’t trust me, Orson Welles knows the negroni is good for you:

“The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you.
They balance each other.”

So in drinking, as in life, always maintain that delicate balance of sweet and bitter.

Post also published on Medium.