Illustration by Lauren Tamaki
As a traveller, I’m not into kissing historic stones, taking selfies with the Sphinx or checking things off bucket lists. There is, however, one touristy thing I simply can’t resist: bars that claim an important cocktail was invented there.
I’ve sipped a Sling at the Long Bar in Singapore, tossed back frozen Daiquiris with Hemingway’s statue at El Floridita in Old Havana, paid way too much for a Bloody Mary at the King Cole Room in Manhattan and celebrated a visit to Paris with a French 75 at Harry’s New York Bar. So, when I heard of the “reopening” of the bar that birthed the Negroni in Florence, I had no choice but to visit.
According to Luca Picchi, Florentine barman, author of The Negroni: An Italian Legend and the world’s foremost authority on this drink, the cocktail was invented in Drogheria Casoni Perfumeria, a drugstore and perfumery in central Florence that did a brisk trade in afternoon aperitivi. In 1919, Count Camillo Negroni asked the bartender to adjust a drink of vermouth and bitter spirit by adding gin and cutting the soda. His eponymous cocktail was born. Picchi says it couldn’t have happened without two things – the city’s dedication to a daily “vermouth hour” and the fact that the count lived in Manhattan during the period that is now called the “Golden Age of the Cocktail.”
Florence has always had a way of attracting nomads and worldly types like the count, who appreciate its role as a major player in modernity. It’s the city that gifted us opera, postwar Italian fashion, the upright piano, gelato and, well, the Renaissance. And its lively café culture has been a key part of all that innovation.
After Casoni closed, its space was taken over by Caffè Giacosa, a casual pasticceria that was happy to keep the aperitivo hour tradition alive and take over bragging rights to being the birthplace of the Negroni until it closed in 2001. Now, that mantle has been taken up by Giacosa 1815, a bar located 15 metres from the original space that celebrates the Negroni as its own (even though the only detail backing the link is an unrestrained enthusiasm for Florence’s signature drink).
Giacosa is outfitted with a luxurious marble bar and tabletops, shiny brass accents and lush blue velvet upholstery. It’s staffed by skilled bartenders who deliver the kind of rarefied service you’d expect in London’s great hotel bars. The leather-bound cocktail list offers a Negroni menu with several reimaginings including the fresh and vital Cham-on, a twist on the White Negroni that’s streamed into a custom glass with a perfectly clear king cube embossed with the letter “G.”
The tony space may not be a great facsimile of humbler Florentine cafés, but it still manages to be a bar with a sense of place. Its opulence also fits in neatly with a new wave of elegant cocktail bars in the city that combine a passion for local drink culture with polished – and, often, modernist – bartending techniques.
Refinement meets rusticity at Locale, a breathtaking bar in a historic palazzo with a laboratory in the cellar used to transform regional ingredients such as purple carrots and local honey into tasty cocktails. There’s also the hot pink bar at the Santa Cocktail Club, where bartenders offer liquid interpretations of cherished culinary traditions including a take on Cantucci e Vin Santo (cookies served with dessert wine) made with biscuit-infused spirits. At the world’s first Gucci cocktail bar, Gucci Giardino 25, local vermouths are mixed with ingredients such as yuzu sake to make Negroni riffs.
For visitors who want to enjoy the drink standing at the bar in a Florentine institution channelling more old-school vibes, there’s no shortage of places: Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski or Caffè Rivoire will all do the trick. At the latter, it’s possible you might run into Luca Picchi, since he thinks it’s about the best place in the city to drink a Negroni today.
Sitting at Giacosa 1815, even without the aura of the Negroni’s actual original birthplace or its charming old café atmosphere, is still an excellent reminder of Florence’s epicurean allure. This is where a flashy count and a drugstore bartender invented a drink that makes the list of history’s most significant cocktails.
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