How to Make a Frozen Negroni, a Refreshing Summer Spin on the Classic
The Frozen Negroni is the Negroni’s final achievement. It’s like Scorsese getting his Oscar, or Derek Zoolander learning to turn left—it’s the version of the Negroni that climbed that last unscalable peak, and accomplished its full and final conquest of the cocktail calendar. It takes what may be the ideal cocktail, finds the one narrow case in which it’s just a shade less than flawless, and perfects it.
To explain: The Negroni is a cocktail that we tend to think of as refreshing, but it is so in a way that’s difficult to define. Most refreshing cocktails are obvious—they’ll be cooling with cucumber or tart with lime or juicy with watermelon—but Negroni is different in that it is literally none of those things. It’s a bit sweet and it’s literally all alcohol, and yet most of the year, it codes as sufficiently refreshing to have for happy hour or lunch. It’s great before or after dinner, in warm or cool weather, and pretty much anywhere, at any time, always.
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What’s the “pretty much” doing in that last sentence? It’s an exception for the height of summer. Yes, we usually say the Negroni can be refreshing, but in those August days where the heat can melt glass and the drops of sweat sizzle on the sidewalk as they fall, the Negroni’s refreshing qualities, mysterious and diffuse that they are, plainly don’t cut it any longer. We need more.
The Frozen Negroni is here to answer that call. While many bartenders have put a Negroni in a blender to see what would happen, the one most worth talking about is from Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Pacific Standard in Portland, Ore. Morgenthaler is pretty famous and certainly has his share of neo-classics, but he says he never meant for his Frozen Negroni to be among them, just that it had been his go-to summer drink after work for years. But the more people who tried it, the more they wanted the recipe for it, so he ultimately shared it on his blog.
What makes this version so great is that it is not only perfectly balanced and viscerally refreshing, but it is still clearly a Negroni. Lots of summer flavors could go well here (coconut, watermelon, kiwi, etc., etc.) but only orange could juice up the recipe while functionally disappearing into the classic flavor profile. To this orange juice he added a touch of necessary sugar (the cocktail needs it, more on this below) and blended it, and the results are astounding, a frozen cocktail that is still mature, both hedonistically delicious and solidly adult, and what I imagine sorbet would taste like in heaven. It’s something I look forward to every summer since I learned about it almost six years ago. It is the perfect high summer Negroni.
“The Blended Negroni,” Morgenthaler writes, “epitomizes everything that a Negroni stands for: It’s refreshing, it’s bitter, and it’s perfect before or after dinner. This blended version is all that… but with a little more.”
Frozen Negroni
1 oz. Campari
1 oz. gin
1 oz. sweet vermouth
2 oz. orange juice
0.75oz Simple Syrup (or 1 tbsp. white sugar)
Add all ingredients to a blender. If you’re using sugar as opposed to simple syrup, blend without ice for 10 to 20 seconds to dissolve the sugar. Then add 8 oz. ice, and blend on high for 10 or so seconds, until all the ice is thoroughly crushed. Pour into a tall glass, and garnish with an orange slice or peel.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS
Gin: My favorite Negroni gin is Tanqueray, which to me, most perfectly fits into the classic build. That said, I feel more strongly about it in a classic Negroni than I do here. The extra juice and ice make precision relatively less important, so feel free to use whatever gin you prefer.
Sweet Vermouth: My favorite Negroni vermouth is Cocchi Vermouth di Torino, and if anything, I feel more strongly about it here than I do in the classic cocktail. Cocchi has a pronounced vanilla note—in the Negroni template, that adds depth right when the cocktail needs it most, and so to me, Negronis with Cocchi taste the most dynamic and complete. I understand some people taste the presence of vanilla as an excess of sweetness and I respect that position, I just disagree.
Here, though, with a heroic quantity of orange juice, the vanilla note in the Cocchi Vermouth di Torino is even more welcome, as vanilla and orange are a legendary flavor match, particularly in a frozen beverage.
Orange Juice: My constant admonishment is to make sure you use fresh OJ in your cocktails, as it is the citrus juice that goes stale the fastest, and with the biggest difference between fresh and even one-day-old. I’ll admit it matters less here than it does in say the Blood & Sand or the Bronx, but it still matters. If you’ve gotten this far through this article and you want a Frozen Negroni right away but only have pasteurized bottled orange juice, it’s fine, make the drink, but do yourself a favor and buy some oranges next time you’re out.
Simple Syrup: It might seem a little insane to add sugar to a Negroni, but as Morganthaler himself says, “it’s absolutely crucial for delivering mid-palate flavor in blended drinks. You’re essentially going to be adding half a pint of water to this Negroni, and sugar is going to keep it from tasting like, well, nothing.”
He’s right about this. I tried to cheat it—first, to not add any excess sweetness, and then, to dribble it in 0.25 oz. at a time, and it didn’t taste right until I got to the whole 0.75 oz. It’s a blended drink. It needs it.
Ice: Getting the quantity of ice right is the hardest thing about blended drinks. You’re looking for 8 oz., and if you have the ability to weigh your ice, silly though you may feel, that silliness will be attended by the confidence that it’ll be the exact right amount every time. Otherwise, it’ll take some trial and error to get it right. Try to aim for not enough, and then add more as you go. It’s easy to add ice, it’s less easy to add more balanced cocktail.
Blender Technique: After reading Garret Richard’s Tropical Standard (as discussed with the Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri), I’ve largely changed how I blend cocktails, specifically in regards to 1. Using sugar instead of simple syrup, and 2. Adding a small amount of xanthan gum. I do neither here. Why?
1. Using sugar instead of simple syrup keeps 0.5 oz water out of the drink, and for a small cocktail like a Strawberry Daiquiri, that 0.5 oz. makes almost a 20 percent difference. With a bigger, 5 oz. build like this, the water is a mere 10 percent difference, and I tried it both ways and the difference was so small I felt like I could’ve been imagining it, so in the end it doesn’t matter. Use whichever is easier for you.
2. I don’t know why, but I didn’t prefer it with xantham gum. Because of the specific need for this cocktail to be maximally refreshing, I thought the creamier body of adding xanthan gum worked against that purpose. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great, but it’s also kind of a pain in the ass, and I’m not sorry to skip it in this case.
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