NOTD - The Unreproducable Negroni

It has taken a while following my return from Italy to get round to any experimentation with the four bottles I brought back (three of those four from Turin, it being my final port of call, and not wanting to lug too many around). Finally though I decided it was time, so here's the first of my Negroni Of The Day (NOTD) posts.

So, to begin with, I thought I'd throw together a particularly eclectic Negroni with a set of ingredients which will collectively be rather hard to source. Whilst Carlo Alberto may be distributed internationally, the other two are only available in the immediate vicinity of where they're produced - Turin and Kentish Town in London. So I feel fairly safe in assuming this is a unique concoction.

A Negroni, or perhaps a close relative thereof, for the purists who might consider using something other than Campari, and something other than a red vermouth, to be perhaps two bridges too far. So, we have: Riserva Carlo Alberto Bitter Rouge, Mulassano vermouth, and, as if we weren't already careering dangerously into "Here be Dragons" territory, Highwayman Gin, a very small scale production gin from my neck of the woods in London.

If you'll indulge the tangent, whilst acutely aware I'm not a TV chef, and just somebody documenting on a blog about having opened some bottles and subsequently poured them into a glass, I can't help but be reminded of Keith Floyd here. One of my favourite things about Floyd was his preparedness to be brutally honest when something didn't go well (how many modern TV chefs do that?).

So, in the spirit of the great man, I will happily admit this was not a success!

As much as I feel some compulsion to be loyal to a local product, and as delighted as I am by this kind of tiny scale neighbourhood gin production, I cannot really pretend that I thought the Highwayman gin mixed well. For any of you who have been to Kentish Town, whilst it does appear to endear itself to its residents, and certainly has its highlights, I don't think it would be entirely unfair to opine that it has some rough edges, and I suppose in that sense one could argue that Highwayman gin is fairly representative of the terroir. The other two ingredients in this ensemble are rather delicate flowers, and were overpowered by the outturn of the decidedly old school and low tech copper still which produces Highwayman.

Subsequently, I tried just the Mulassano vermouth and the Carlo Alberto Bitter as a Milano e Torino (the grandfather of the Negroni, without the gin), which, given the provenance of the bitter in this case, ought instead to be called a Torino e Torino. This made for a very pleasant drink - perhaps a bit sweet, but not in a cloying way, and at the same time fruity, floral, bitter - simultaneously light but interesting.