Tonight was a terrific night for cocktail exploration in Champaign-Urbana. Boltini, the fantastic martini bar in downtown Champaign, featured a *free* show by swingin' surf-rock band The Cocktail Preachers. The place was packed full of cocktail culture enthusiasts and retro hipsters, including local lounge/exotica/retro swing DJ and bachelor pad king Java, of Java's Bachelor Pad, who was handing out samples of his new quarterly magazine.
Boltini is notoriously awesome for never having a cover charge, and shaking arguably the best cocktails in town. I tried a negroni, a gin-based cocktail I've wanted to sample for awhile, and it was indeed tasty. It's made with gin, sweet vermouth, and bitters (the "poured" style bitters, such as Campari, versus the "dashed" style, such as Angostura), the last ingredient lending most of the flavor to the cocktail. The gin and vermouth are still there, though, and add a smoothness to the bitterness of the Campari.
NEGRONI
- 1 Measure Gin
- 1 Measure Sweet Vermouth
- 1 Measure Campari
2 comments:
You know, we went to Boltini on a Sunday night, and the Negroni was only "meh."
Though, it was a really off night anyways-- my martini was unfinishable.
That is very surprising. They are typically impeccable with their cocktails. Perhaps they had a trainee working that night who didn't get the ratios correct - that's the only thing I could think of that would mess up a drink there, since they pretty much only use high quality spirits...
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