15 Things You Didn't Know About the Negroni

Negroni Week—a charitable homage to the three-ingredient cocktail of Campari, gin, and vermouth (1 part of each)—begins on June 1. More than 1,700 bars and restaurants around the world will mix their favorite Negroni variations and donate a portion of the proceeds from each one sold to a charity of their choice. Campari, in a smart marketing move (since the whole week plugs its product), started sponsoring the week last year and this year will donating $10,000 to a charity chosen by whichever bar raises the most money on its own.

In our experience, the Negroni is an acquired taste. It's bitter. It's boozy. But it's stood the test of time and is beloved by many, especially chefs, bartenders, and others in the hospitality industry who know a thing or two about good drinks.

We asked Gary "Gaz" Regan, whose book The Negroni: Drinking to La Dolce Vita, with Recipes & Lore, was released earlier this month, for some facts about the drink that might surprise even veteran imbibers:

1. The Negroni was created upon a request by an Italian nobleman, Count Camillo Negroni, circa 1919 in Florence at Bar Casoni. The bartender's name was Fosco Scarselli.

2. Orson Wells was quoted in The Coshocton Tribune as describing the Negroni thusly: 'The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.'"

3. Norwegian bartender Monica Berg created a Negroni Cheesecake that she made to celebrate momentous occasions at Aqua Vitae, a bar in Oslo.

4. "Negronis are always far better when stirred with the finger," —Gary "Gaz" Rega

5. Federico Fellini, the Italian movie director known for his beautiful flights of fantasy in movies such as 8 1/2 and Satyricon, produced a commercial for Campari, arguably the defining ingredient in the Negroni. The ad was called Oh, che bel paesaggio! ("Oh, what a beautiful landscape!").

6. Jeffrey Morgenthaler, the bar manager at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon, ages large batches of Negronis in oak barrels for around five to seven weeks before serving them.

7. Phoebe Esmon, a Philadelphia bartender, wrote a poem she called Nine Ways of Looking at a Negroni as her tribute to the cocktail.

8. In The Wall Street Journal, writer Kevin Sintumuong declared the Negroni to be "a punch-packing, bitter sweet, holy boozy trinity that, despite its complex flavors, may be the world's most foolproof cocktail."

9. The Boulevardier, a Negroni-style cocktail that calls for whiskey instead of gin, was named for The Paris Boulevardier, a sort of a Parisian New Yorker magazine, in the early 20th Century. The publisher, Erskine Gwynne, was related to the Vanderbilt family in the USA, and his sister, Alice "Kiki" Gwynne, was a notorious drug addict, often referred to as "the girl with the silver syringe."

10. In Making an Elephant: Writing from Within, author Graham Smith wrote "For me [the Negroni] will always be the drink of initiation and liberation. I only have to sip it to remind myself of all that's enchanting—and it can be enchanting—about the writing life."

11 David Wondrich, author of Imbibe!, declared the Negroni to be "One of the World's Indispensable Cocktails."

12. A certain Noel Negroni disputes the fact that Count Camillo Negroni created the drink, citing a relative of his, General Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni, as being the man responsible for coming up with the recipe.

13. Count Camillo Negroni rode the range in the USA in the late 1800s, and when an American reporter bumped into him in Italy, circa 1924, asking the man if he spoke English, Negroni answered him by saying, "You're tootin' I do, hombre. Which way are you drifting, and where from?"

14. Writer Michael Chiarello declared "If I were James Bond (an Italian Bond, of course), a Negroni would be my drink. It's a masculine drink. Not sweet but with huge flavors. It commands the question, 'What's that you're drinking?'"

15. In Milan they say that one must drink Campari three times before you can start to appreciate it.