How to Make This Prickly Negroni Twist

Have you ever pet a porcupine? Well no, probably not. How about this—have you ever been within a few inches of a live wire, and felt the electric buzz of proximity in your skin? Or have you listened to a Nina Simone LP, the power of her voice spiked with the pops and cracks of the vinyl? Have you ever shaken hands with the devil himself?

The experience of drinking a Mane of Needles is a decently familiar one, but it can be a struggle to find something to compare it to. It is smooth and silky, powerful and bitter, complex and elegant, but it is suffused with tingly energy. It’s refined, but it crackles.

The Mane of Needles is an outer leaf on the family tree of Negronis. A Negroni, if you haven’t met, is what happens when you combine gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth; it is the unchallenged king of the bitter cocktails and a pinnacle of human achievement, mixological or otherwise. It is also a very versatile template, and you can riff on it in a few main ways. One is to change the base spirit—e.g. Mezcal Negronis, etc—which gives us the Boulevardier, made with American Whiskey instead of gin, one of the Negroni’s earliest and strongest children. The other way is to add things, hang more complexity on it; there’s a million of these, but one of our absolute favorites is the Autumn Negroni, invented at the late Chicago speakeasy the Violet Hour in 2011, which layers more bitterness on the classic cocktail like a fall outfit.

Collide these two ideas and you get the Mane of Needles. It starts with rye whiskey, for spice and broad oaky shoulders, which is combined with Campari and sweet vermouth. To this is added orange bitters, the herbal French liqueur Bénédictine, and Fernet Branca—an addition which, even at only a quarter ounce, is what gives the Mane of Needles its name.

This is a good drink without the Fernet. The orange bitters add a dry and zesty citrus character, and the Bénédictine brings a late-palate honeyed complexity that is warmed with baking spices. But it’s devil Fernet, with its aggressive menthol and saffron, that sharpens all the points into needles, and moves the drink from good to great. Fernet Branca is a brash and bitter amaro, but when used judiciously as it is here, it adds little prickly sparks to the mid-palate and finish, the flavor equivalent of the orange dots you see after a fireworks show every time you blink. It takes the strong chord of bitterness and raises its spine, a black cat of a cocktail, one that’s easy to like (assuming you’re good with bitterness) and not easy to forget. It’s a little like petting a porcupine. If you’ve ever tried such a thing.

Mane of Needles

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice. Stir briskly for 10 to 15 seconds, strain into a coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with an orange peel.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Ratios: This is a boozy drink—the above measures 3.85 oz. and, because of the high-proof ingredients, is the equivalent of almost 3.5 oz. of vodka. What we did at the bar was to mix all the ingredients into a batch, and then pour 2.75 oz. of the batch (which is about 70 percent scale of the above recipe). If you plan on making a few of these I recommend it. Otherwise you can choose one of two paths: Either deal with the size of the drink, or start at 1.5 oz. rye and try to cut every other measurement by 30 percent as well. I realize this is an annoying instruction, and I apologize for it. Good luck.

Rye: This was specifically made with Bulleit Rye, which is a strong choice. Dickel will work as well. The 95 percent rye/5 percent barley mashbill from MGP really shines here—you can make it with a Kentucky rye, but the corn in the mashbill will stick out.

Vermouth: Vermouth here needs power to hold its own against these other ingredients, so we reach for Carpano Antica.

Orange Bitters: The orange bitters were originally Angostura Orange, which is still a good choice if you use them sparingly and aren’t allergic to their slightly weird flavor. Honestly the flavor is so big here I suspect anything would work—it needs zesty orange with pithy bitterness and they all have that to a greater or lesser degree. Use whatever you like.