Negroni

In 1919, Count Camillo Negroni walked into Caffè Casoni on Via de' Tornabuoni in Florence and asked bartender Fosco Scarselli to strengthen his Americano by replacing the soda water with gin. Scarselli obliged, swapped the lemon garnish for orange to signal the change, and the drink had no name yet. The regulars started calling it the Negroni after the man who ordered it. The Americano that Negroni modified was itself a blend of Campari, sweet vermouth, and soda water.

Count Camillo Negroni was not inventing but improvising: the Americano had been served in Italian bars since the late nineteenth century, named in honor of the American tourists who favored its lighter profile. Negroni's substitution simply removed the dilution. He was, by several accounts, a man who had spent years in America working as a cowboy and card player, which may explain his preference for a stronger drink. Whatever the biography, his name attached to the result.

The surname Negroni is recorded in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna from the medieval period. It derives from the Italian 'negro,' meaning dark or black-complexioned, itself from the Latin 'niger,' black. The surname functioned as a nickname for a dark-haired or dark-skinned ancestor, in the way that English surnames like Brown or Black still work. The Latin niger also yielded the Italian 'nero,' the Spanish 'negro,' and the French 'noir.'

The cocktail remained largely Italian until the 1950s and 1960s, when British bartenders began including it in standard references. By the 1990s the Negroni was appearing in cocktail manuals globally. In the twenty-first century it became the flagship drink of the global cocktail revival, generating variations including the Negroni Sbagliato (with prosecco instead of gin) and the white Negroni (with Suze and Lillet Blanc). The name Negroni now circulates far beyond any count or café.