🎶It’s the most wonderful time of the year. 🎶

Now that song is stuck in your head. You’re welcome.

But seriously. Who doesn’t love Negroni Week? Well, people who don’t like negonis I guess, but who cares about them right now. It’s Negroni Week! Yes indeed! Brought to you by the lovable people at the Campari marketing department, it’s the perfect scheme to sell you more Campari.

It’s more than that of course! It’s a week-long celebration of one of the greatest, most venerable, and most adaptable cocktails around. And I’m not just saying that because I want Campari to send me free samples.

According to the Negroni Week website, this honored tradition of a week-long celebration of the negroni dates far, far back to the heady days of yore in that grand ol’ year of 2013.

That said, 2020 is quite the year for Negroni Week. Seeing as 2020 has already fucked up everything else, might as well mess with this too. It was postponed from June to September, of course. But in the spirit of all of us trying to survive this year, Negroni Week has a grand list of fundraising partners. Be sure to check that out, and if you’ve got some coin to spare, help out you friendly, neighborhood bar or restaurant in need.

You may have noticed the lack of the traditional recipe for the negroni at the top of this post. Well, I’m hoping you don’t need it, and if you do there are many many places to find it (hint: it’s equal parts gin, Campari, and red vermouth). But also, I love exploring the variations. Tonight I tried out the Sailor’s Negroni (photo and recipe above). I rather enjoyed it. Would drink again. And that’s the thing. There are so many wonderful variations on the negroni theme that you can knock your liver around from here to kingdom come on just that alone.

We’re also lucky enough in Hong Kong right now that our bars are open, which I know is still not the case many places. And it’s pretty easy to get lost in the plethora of local options as well. But if you’re town’s bars are not open for service, hopefully they’ve managed to figure out a take-away or delivery negroni option that you can enjoy this week. After all, you wouldn’t want to miss out on this, the grandest of holiday weeks.

Wherever you’re at, and whatever you’re doing, I hope you found some time to unwind this week. And I hope you were able to indulge in a negroni or two (or twelve) to help with that. Cheers until Negroni Week next year… your faithful Cocktail Dork.