Haiku #52

Beneath winter’s coat
The heart nurses its young loves
With tender intensity.

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Christmas Cheer

Shake in a Boston mixer:
1.5 oz. Becherovka
1.5 oz. pomegranate liqueur (such as Pama)
10 drops (2 dashes) fig bitters (such as Brooklyn Hemispherical Black Mission Fig)
Splash maraschino cherry juice
[ice cubes]

Pour:
Martini glass

Garnish:
Maraschino cherry (or three)

Negroni variations

My friend Jesa writes me with some intriguing thinking notes on the negroni and its variations. Redacted and posted, with her permission, for your consideration:

Here’s a drink I’ve been sorting out. It arose for me from beginning to make a negroni sbagliato and then discovering I didn’t have any bubbly. I don’t have the correct measures sorted out yet, but it goes something like this:

Shake in a Boston mixer:
1.5 oz gin (something straightforward, not a Hendrick’s or Tanqueray–there’s a lot going on here already)
1.0 oz. Campari
0.5 oz Punt e Mes
[ice cubes]

Pour
Lowball glass
1-2 oz. soda water
[ice cubes]

Somehow tastes better if the glass is crudely blown with thick walls.

(Punt e Mes is like a bitter form of vermouth, so it heads towards Campari in taste. I like it better than the regular sweet vermouth for this drink because it’s less syrupy, and I get a range of enigmatic herbals.)

You could add orange bitters, or express/flame an orange peel over the top, to veer it towards the classic negroni, which may be finished with an orange peel in it; but there’s already orange in there somewhere, so… nah.

It needs an Italian name. I’m thinking an opera star or film director. [Suggestions welcome in comments.]

Then I looked it up on the web and lots of people have come up with something like this. At Blue Inc. here in Boston, they’re doing a deconstructed version: Old Tom gin, liquid-nitrogen-whisked Cinzano, Campari foam. Not sure what putting the Cinzano in liquid nitrogen does to it.

If you’re in a slightly different mood, this is also good:

Stir in a bar glass:
1 oz. gin
1 oz. Punt e Mes
1 oz. Campari

Pour:
Lowball glass
[ice cubes]

Apparently this is the canonical version of a negroni.