- Julia Thiel
- The limes are purely decorative.
I’ve been reading a lot about Campari drinks lately, which is a little odd since I don’t really enjoy the flavor of Campari. But I recently tried it in a ginger liqueur cocktail and enjoyed it, plus I have a big bottle of it at home (I bought it to make punch and then ended up going with a different recipe than I’d planned on). So whenever I see a drink recipe that involves Campari and it sounds like it might be appealing, I save it to my Paprika recipe box. Looking through it recently, I noticed that there were two recipes with the same three base ingredients—gin, Campari, and Cointreau—in varying proportions, differing only in the fourth ingredient. After a little searching online, I found a third recipe that also fell into this category. And, of course, the Negroni involves gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth—but I had to draw the line somewhere, so I limited myself to the first three recipes.
The original is quite tart—lemon is the predominant flavor. The orange liqueur (I used Patron’s orange liqueur rather than Cointreau, since it’s quite a bit cheaper but doesn’t have the artificial-tasting flavor of most triple sec) balances the Campari and nearly eliminates the bitterness. I liked the sourness of the drink, but it did become sort of mouth-puckering after the first couple sips; next time I’ll increase the amount of orange liqueur a little. Hess’s version is both sweeter and much more bitter. The orange liqueur still tones down the Campari, but relatively speaking there’s much less lemon juice, and the flavor slips into the background. It’s a cocktail that highlights the flavor of the Campari, which can be good or bad depending on your opinion of Campari.
