One part of Gin, one of Campari, one of Vermouth of Torino. Here’s the perfect mix, the recipe of the world most aristocratic cocktail, one of the first displays of the Made in Italy. The bartending star Luca Picchi retraces its captivating history in the book Negroni Cocktail Una Leggenda Italiana (An Italian Legend), published by Giunti Editore with the collaboration of Campari.
The author sheds light on a piece of Florentine history and recalls the adventurous life of count Camillo, inventor of the Negroni, through the Florence’s high society salons, the rituals of the American Golden Age of Cocktail, the historic cafés Casoni and later Giacosa, to arrive at the brilliant intuition that turned the cocktail world upside down: to add a third of Gin to the Milano-Torino cocktail (later called Americano), composed of Vermouth rosso and Bitter Campari.
The unique world which had as its main characters a count and a barman is revived in the pages of this volume, among which we discover the origin of the legend. It all started in the late 1910s. In this period, count Camillo Negroni, before heading to the luxurious salon of the Grand Hotel of Florence, now the St. Regis, always stopped at the Drogheria Profumeria (Grocer’s shop and Perfumery) Casoni to meet his lifelong friends: an aristocrat, an elegant lady. a financier, a fiacre driver.
And above all a barman, the young Fosca Scarselli, a shy guy but with a classy air that earned him the count’s trust. It was him, in the light and dark atmosphere of this amusing place, one unspecified day between 1917 and 1920, who suggested to his barman friend to
“strengthen” with Gin his Americano, which he liked because, during his long wandering far from his homeland, it reminded him of Italy’s aromas and perfumes. And because it had that bitter sweet taste, just like life. And so it was that Camillo started to order every day his “usual to Fosco, arousing the curiosity of the people in the bar which in turn ordered an Americano à la count Negroni” And from that to saying just “Negroni” was but a shot step. While the success: endless.
The Volume (224 pages, 20 euros) is divided into three parts. The first on “il Conto Camillo” (‘Count Camillo”) is an historic and social canvas of the beginning of the twentieth-century between Tuscany and United States. The curiosity about the famous drink and its inventor, aroused by a picture of 1915 showing Cammillo Luigi Manfredo Maria Negroni, motivated Luca Picchi (at the beginning and in the picture aside) in undertaking an in-depth research, examining antique documents and consulting some witnesses. The section twist and classic is dedicated to the art of mixing: the Negroni is unveiled both from the technical point of view, with its traditional recipe, and through some of its variations and evolutions the volume ends with the third part:”anima, mente e cuore* (“soul, mind and heart”), dedicated to the three essential ingredients gin, Campari and vermouth.
