So Who Invented the Negroni After All?

The Negroni’s origin is far from simple. " Rife with contradictions, apparent lies, and even crazier possible truths, the conflicting stories of the true creation of the Negroni are a twisted set of yarns involving multiple generations of European royalty, high fashion, West Africa, an Italian cowboy, and some journo from Spokane", writes Wija for the Seattle Times.

The story that became a legend:

The Negroni is traditionally said to have been invented in Florence a century ago by one Count Camillo Negroni, a picaresque Italian adventurer and sometime Western cowboy who took his favorite cocktail, the “Americano” (aka the “Milano-Torino,” comprising equal parts Campari and sweet vermouth), and had his friendly bartender make it stronger by adding gin. This is the classic story, complete with “facts,” like the bartender’s name (Fosco Scarselli) and the year (1919). The bar where it reportedly was first mixed, the Caffe Casoni on the Via de’ Tornabuoni, still exists and is currently owned by fashion designer Roberto Cavalli. There is even a photograph said to be of Camillo Negroni that is, however, likely of somebody else. 

Following the explosive popularity of the Negroni, the Count’s family built upon its success by establishing the Negroni Distillery within the same year, in Treviso, Italy. Their company produced an off-the-shelf rendering of the cocktail, which they called the Antico Negroni. Due to the neverending success of the Negroni, the renowned European distillery is still operational to this very day.

But in recent years, there has been a scandalous dispute around the Negroni's origins.

The scandalous alternate story:

There is currently a living noble Negroni, a French Corsican/Puerto Rican named Noel Negroni, who alleges that there was never a Camillo Negroni in his family tree, at all, and that the man in question is a fiction dreamed up by a liquor company. Noel supposedly has the documentation to prove it…

Noel claims the Negroni was invented 50 years earlier, by a different Count Negroni, one Count Pascal Olivier de Negroni, dashing brigadier general and cavalier. This man did exist (there is a real photo, with glorious mustaches), and he was not Italian but French, a decorated Corsican hero of the Franco-Prussian war who invented the drink as a digestive aid for his wife while stationed in Senegal in the mid-1800s, after which it became a big hit at the officers’ club in Paris. 

But did that first Camillo Negroni, the Italian previously mentioned even exist? 

Some sources, including renowned cocktail historian David Wondrich, claim that he did.  Camillo was recorded as a passenger on a ship to New York in 1892, and while he himself might not have been a count, his grandfather Luigi Negroni was. His descendants (or at least, some Negroni descendants) later founded the Negroni distillery in 1919 to bottle the cocktail as “Antico Negroni” in 1919, right after this Count Camillo Negroni is said to have invented it. 

So which story is true? More in-depth historical analysis at Drinking Cup.

In the meantime, it's #Barrelsmith #Negroni time!

* sources  Seatle Times,   Spirit of York,