Four Ways to Get Your Cocktail Fix This Negroni Week in Sydney
Celebrate 100 years of the drink with parmesan-spiked cocktails, negroni ice luges and pop-up art galleries for charity.
Four Ways to Get Your Cocktail Fix This Negroni Week in Sydney
Celebrate 100 years of the drink with parmesan-spiked cocktails, negroni ice luges and pop-up art galleries for charity.
Sydney's love affair with the negroni may be a relatively new phenomenon, but the cocktail has actually been around for a full century. Legend has it that it originated in Florence's Cafe Casoni, when Count Camillo Negroni requested the concoction for the first time — that's one part gin, one part vermouth and one part Campari, garnished with an orange peel.
For the cocktail's 100th anniversary, Campari is doing up its annual Negroni Week celebrations in style and venues all over the city are once again getting involved. Apart from all the negronis, the week doubles as a huge fundraiser, with most participating venues donating proceeds to a charity of their choice.
It'll all go down from June 24–30, with some spots keeping the party going all month long. Here are our picks for the best ways to get your negroni fix this year. There's a negroni luge, pop-up bars, live art demonstrations and a whole heap of specialty negronis on offer — created by the best bartenders in the city, of course. And if you can't choose between them, our negroni finder will pick a place for you.
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Australian gin favourite Four Pillars is getting in on the Negroni Week action by launching pop-up stores around the country. In Sydney, that pop-up will take place within the The Dolphin Hotel. It’ll offer the gin brand’s new range of bottled negronis, which range from a spiced coffee version to a herbaceous number and one that uses Four Pillars’ famed Bloody Shiraz Gin. You can enjoy these batched cocktails at the bar or purchase one for takeaway, with a four pack also on offer. The pop-up bar will run throughout negroni week, from June 24–30, with $1 from every negroni sold going to OzHarvest.
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Underground CBD steakhouse Bistecca will be transformed into an art gallery for Negroni Week. Last week, it commissioned five artists — pop artist Saint Ali, painter Marissa Mu, landscape artist John Sheehy, designer Jesse Chick and portrait painter Sangeeta Saras Lachmaiya — to create a piece of art live in the space. And, from June 17–28, that art will be auctioned off to a charity of each artist’s choice. Punters can peruse the artwork with negroni in-hand, and choose to bid on one, too. You can check on the current bids at the Bistecca website, with the winners will be announced on Friday, June 28. On the strictly negroni side of things, the Bistecca team has created a Four Pillars version, with $1 from each drink donated to Orange Sky, a charity that aids homeless people across Australia.
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Matteo Downtown will bring Negroni Week’s namesake cocktail back to its Italian roots. To start, the CBD restaurant is slinging some seriously unusual takes on negroni, including the signature Double Negroni, which combines two cocktails in one. It’s a white negroni (that’s gin, French vermouth and Cocchi Americano), topped with a negroni-injected ice sphere that slowly melts into cocktail round two. The menu also features a parmesan version — it’s washed with Sicilian green olives and the rim is garnished with a parmesan crust and basil dust. All of the negronis are $15 during the venue’s weekday aperitivo hour from 4–6pm, and will be served with free Italian-style bar snacks, created by head chef Orazio. The entire negroni menu is available from June 3–28, with proceeds going toward the Fondazione Telethon, an Italian charity that aids children with a rare-immunodeficiency called ADA-SCID.
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The Clock always does something big for Negroni Week, and this year is no different. The Surry Hills stalwart will be home to an extended party from June 16–30. It’ll feature a dedicated negroni room that will host masterclasses, painting sessions, vintage artwork and one big ol’ birthday bash on Thursday, June 27. The party will centre on a negroni ice luge slinging ice-cold versions of the cocktail, plus the requisite birthday cake. If boozy luges aren’t something you’re familiar with, think cocktails poured down an ice slide into your mouth. You can learn how not to use one by watching Jason Bateman in the Office Christmas Party. But, we’ll let you Google that yourself. At the bar, a five-strong negroni list will be on offer all month long, too — and each has been created in partnership with Solotel sister venues, including Barangaroo House, Aria and Opera Bar. There will also be a barrel-aged version up for grabs, available exclusively in the negroni room.
For a full list of negroni week events near you, head to the website.
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