Mandarin Negroni for Two

Why make a single cocktail, when you can make a double? Especially when it’s so darn good. This is our pick for the New Year’s Celebration, but you better drink it with a friend; even with the adulteration of the tangerine juice, it is a very spirit-forward drink. Still, it suits the times.

Tangerine juice, a harbinger of the season, tart and sweet all together. Bitterness from the Campari, and while sweetness is all well and good, a drink that makes you pause and reflect seems appropriate in the New Year. A bitterness that does not dominate, but must be reconciled. There’s joy here, and bright flavor, and dark undertones, and sharpness and smoothness and yes maybe we are overthinking things, perhaps it is only a cocktail, and we should stop the pontificating and wish you all, whatever glass you raise to ring it in, a Very Happy New Year. We’ll do that.
Cheers, dear readers, and friends, and loved ones. May this one coming be the beginning of something good.

Directions

Chill your glasses if you feel it. Squeeze juice from the mandarins, until you have 4 ounces. It’s ok to let the seeds fall in there because they’ll be strained through a cocktail shaker.
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Measure 4 ounces of fresh juice, along with 2 ounces each of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth into the shaker.
You know what to do. Shake the shaker!
Strain the shaken cocktail into a pair of glasses. Rocks glasses are usual, but we look for any excuse to use these thrift-store-scores. Garnish each drink with a mandarin slice, and squeeze a little oil from the rind over each glass.
Cheers. See above.

 

Over to You

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