The bloodwood crew loves a good Negroni, More often than not it is our drink of choice when hitting the town. So, we thought it would be rude not to see how we could make this much loved cocktail just that little bit better.

The idea of ageing Negroni's has been recently popularized by a barman working at a venue called The Clyde Common in Portland. His name is Jeffrey Morgenthaler and has written a pretty awesome blog about his experience (he has also turned his hand to ageing Manhattan’s.) This guy is a legend in my book!

So, What we did was take a vintage port barrel, we added 3 bottles of Campari, 3 bottles of Tanqueray and 3 bottles of Cinzano Rosso. We then left him the hell alone for 7 weeks!

What was really interesting was how the Negroni changed from week to week. After the first week the Campari completely dominated the nose but the port characters from the barrel was really evident on the palate. Then the next week the oak took over completely but that settled down in the third week. Our little Negroni experiment took on a life of his own by changing and becoming more and more complex as the weeks went on.

After seven weeks we decided he was ready and have been serving this delicious cocktail in the restaurant ever since.

We serve the bloodwood barrel aged Negroni deconstructed. With ice, orange rind and bitters on the side so our guests can build to their liking. Sometimes we like to drink ours slightly warmed and sometimes not!! However you have it, it's bloody delicious.

We have also just released a 4-week-old batch and are on our way to making the third round. Hopefully we will end up with a page of different vintages of our barrel aged Negroni on our wine list, That’s if we don't drink it all first!!

Till next time

BW x