On the Negroni

It was in 1937 that M.F.K. Fisher first said that there were two different kinds of food writers, those who imitated Brillat-Savarin, and those who didn't. It is as true now as it was then, although nowadays, it could probably be split into those who imitate Fisher herself and those who don't. She condemns memoirs in which “from each chapter rises a reek, a heady stench of truffles, Chateau Yquem, and quails financière” (naturally), and also the books where young men cycle around Europe staying at charming inns and denouncing “the barbaric horrors of the cocktail.”

I write this as I sip the barbaric horrors of a nice Negroni at a French bistro in my neighborhood. As much as I hate the term “mixology,” it's such a standard part of the gastronomic repertoire now that it's hard for me to imagine an alternative reality, a time when a well-made cocktail wasn't appreciated.

But when I think about what exactly a cocktail is, the context makes a bit more sense. Consider that Negroni I'm drinking, a classic of the génération perdue recently revived from obscurity. And, in 1920, it must have seemed so modern, so detached from any kind of preexisting tradition.

Start with the gin, a drink that's Dutch in origin, but English in soul, and which was one of the first truly commercially distributed alcohols. In England in the early 18^th Century, the hearty, traditional drink of the peasantry was local beer, but as the population moved to the cities, and a market opened up for a distilled drink made from lower-quality grain, gin became the crack cocaine of Enlightenment-era London, as immortalized in the famous William Hogarth print.

Or consider the vermouth. While herbed wines were a major part of the Roman and Medieval drinking traditions as well, vermouth took off as a likewise highly commercialized product in Continental Europe in the 19th Century, with brands like Martini & Rossi and Noilly-Prat all angling for the lucrative cafe market. Such an integral part of the new, highly branded world of alcohol was it that the world's first neon advertisement was for Cinzano vermouth.

And last, there's the Campari, which, while it has its roots in traditional Italian bitters, is a proprietary drink, invented in 1860, a pure capitalist-era product.

Now take those three things, themselves all delinked from the distinct, local traditions of ales, wines, and brandies, and blend them.

So I have to conclude that like the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, or the paintings of Henri Matisse, the Negroni has become a symbol of an older iteration of the modernist idea. Its pedigree comes with the passage of time. Just as how Matisse and his cohorts were once denounced as fauves, the insult became a badge of honor, before becoming a simple historical descriptor. The cocktail is no longer a “barbaric horror,” a bucking of antique tradition, but a part of that antique tradition itself.

I might be drinking this thing because of its delicate balance of sweet and bitter, but, like wearing a vintage shirt, or listening to an old 45 rpm record, there is the joy of placing oneself within the narrative of history. Part of me drinks it because, after a dull, monochrome day, when I see the countless stories contained in one object, it is like holding a prism to it. The whole spectrum becomes visible.