Why the negroni should be your drink of choice this autumn

Abright-red beacon of hope in the darker months, glowing enticingly with the punchy promise of strong, unapologetic booze, the negroni is a proper autumnal drink.

It’s also a proper drink, full stop — like a Martini or neat Scotch. It’s the kind of drink you could never be embarrassed ordering. Indeed, ordering one marks you out as quite the sophisticated flâneur, rather like Jeremy Lee, head chef of the restaurant Quo Vadis, who describes its negroni as ‘a peerless quaff of gin, vermouth and Campari enlightened by ice and the zest of an orange — a magnificent exercise in elegant simplicity’.

Such is his respect for the drink that Quo Vadis hosts an annual Soho negroni championship, this year on 23 October, where London’s top bartenders compete. Last year the winning concoction came from the legendary connoisseur Fergus Henderson for his ‘negroni as it should be’ (50 per cent Tanqueray gin, 30 per cent Punt E Mes vermouth, 20 per cent Campari and a strip of lemon zest); this year Smokestak, Polpo and Smoking Goat are among the 14 bars and restaurants competing for the title of negroni ninja.

But how far should you mess with a classic? Twisted negronis are doing the rounds of London bars, adding flavours, spirits and garnishes that purists would blanch at. Some flavour combinations work — note the single-origin coffee negroni at Caravan, where the fruity, roasted tang of your caffeine fix blends seamlessly with the bittersweet Campari. Others make sense only to the already boozed-up, such as the white truffle negroni at Coupette made with seasonal truffles perhaps better saved for tossing through pasta.

How about when gin is swapped with whisky, as in the chamomile and bourbon rilassato negroni at Il Pampero, giving it an intense butterscotch richness; or with prosecco, as in its fizzily fun sbagliato? Or removing alcohol from the equation altogether, as with the Seedlip ‘NOgroni’, just launched at Selfridges’ new roof-top Italian-inspired garden bar, Il Tetto? Ultimately, as Lee says, nothing can better the original: ‘Anything else is a pretender to the throne. While few remember a concoction, everyone remembers their first negroni.’