Cocktail · Spirit-forward
Rosita
Reposado tequila meets the Negroni formula — agave with an Italian passport.
How to order it: Reposado, Campari, both vermouths, dash of bitters. Stirred, rocks, orange twist.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 1½ oz reposado tequila
- ½ oz Campari
- ½ oz sweet vermouth
- ½ oz dry vermouth; dash Angostura
- Stir; rocks; orange twist
The story
A drink with no legend at all, which is its own kind of legend. The Rosita — reposado tequila run through the Negroni's bitter machinery, with both vermouths and a dash of Angostura — surfaced quietly in late-twentieth-century bar guides with no inventor, no bar, no anecdote attached. It might have vanished entirely had the writer Gary 'Gaz' Regan not pulled it from obscurity and championed it in his 2003 book The Joy of Mixology, just as American bartenders were learning to take agave seriously. The craft renaissance did the rest. The Rosita endures as the cocktail canon's great foundling: parentage unknown, breeding impeccable.
Classic variation
The Rosita is a riff on a classic. Meet the original:
Adjacent pours