Cocktail · Light & sessionable
Negroni Sbagliato
A Negroni made 'wrong' — Prosecco instead of gin, and somehow very right.
How to order it: Born of a Milan bartender's happy accident. With Prosecco, famously.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 1 oz Campari
- 1 oz sweet vermouth
- Top with chilled Prosecco
- Build over ice
- Orange slice
The story
The Negroni Sbagliato, "mistaken Negroni," was born of an actual mistake at Bar Basso in Milan, where in the early 1970s bartender Mirko Stocchetto, in the rush of service, reached for a bottle of sparkling wine instead of gin. He tasted the error, kept it, and named it honestly. Bar Basso still serves it in comically enormous glasses, and the drink lived in pleasant obscurity until 2022, when actor Emma D'Arcy's offhand endorsement of a "Negroni Sbagliato with Prosecco in it" detonated across the internet. It endures because it is the rare blunder that improved on the original's charm, if not its authority.
Classic variation
The Negroni Sbagliato is a riff on a classic. Meet the original:
Adjacent pours