white negroni

2 oz Death's Door Gin
1 oz Cocchi Americano
1/2 oz Suze

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The other drink Scott Holliday made for me at Rendezvous was a White Negroni using a bottle of Suze that he acquired through a French friend of his. Suze is a French wine-based bitter liqueur flavored with wild gentian root and other botanicals, and it substitutes here for the Campari in the regular Negroni. The PDT Cocktail Book provides a history that the recipe was created by Wayne Collins in London cerca 2002; the recipe that the book presents was similar save for 3/4 oz of Suze instead of the 1/2 oz that Scott used. As I mentioned in the Two Cups of Blood post, it is still unclear whether Suze will be entering our market anytime soon with so many exciting promises left unfulfilled over the past few years.
The White Negroni's lemon twist donated the initial bouquet before gentian and other vegetal aromas came to the forefront. The Cocchi Americano's citrus wine notes filled the sip, and the swallow offered Suze's pleasing bitterness that played well with the gin's botanicals.