The Best Italian Cocktail Is Complex, Bold, And Inspiring

Italy is such an endlessly rich fountain of epicurean delights. Its cuisine often steals the spotlight, but the country has certainly never slept on the liquid side of things. It's home to one of the world's most well-known, best-loved wine scenes, and it's also gifted us with plenty of incredible cocktails that have gone on to be fixtures at bars and restaurants worldwide. In fact, Italian cocktails are really more than just that; they're a way of life. Aperitivo is like Italy's happy hour, when friends gather to enjoy drinks that fire up their appetites for dinner. The country's drinks, therefore, have been designed with that in mind, giving us the Aperol spritz and endless variations. With plenty of contributions to today's mixology arena, we ranked nine of Italy's most iconic cocktails to find a favorite.

The winner is another aperitivo staple: the Negroni. Yes, the Aperol spritz is legendary and crowd-pleasing, and it took the number-two slot. But the Negroni is simple perfection. It is just three parts, simple enough for even the most inexperienced bartender, but each of those parts must be high-quality and bring a crucial flavor component to the mix. Campari contributes a bright, bitter-leaning but slightly sweet punch of rhubarb and citrus peel, sweet vermouth lends mouth-coating viscosity alongside florals and spices, and gin's relatively higher alcohol content tempers this mix and adds its own botanicals. The Negroni has become an international favorite and has helped lead the craft cocktail revolution by inspiring bartenders everywhere.

The Negroni's unrivaled reputation speaks for itself. It's believed to have been invented at a café in Florence in 1919 when Count Camillo Negroni ordered an Americano — Campari, sweet vermouth, and soda water — but with gin instead of the bubbles for extra oomph. Negroni's family would go on to establish a distillery to produce a pre-made version of the cocktail. 

Global unrest kept the Negroni from breaking out beyond Italy for decades, but Campari promoted the drink as a marketing effort and eventually helped it spread. Smitten bartenders took it into the craft cocktail revolution around the turn of the 21st century. The way the Negroni became a lasting "It" cocktail was that contemporary imbibers were ready for more complex, bitter-leaning flavor profiles, and because the world's top bartenders were serving up both the quintessential Negroni as well as all kinds of intriguing riffs.

There are so many Negroni variations to try: the Negroni Sbagliato with prosecco, the Boulevardier with bourbon, the mezcal Negroni, and so on. Swapping out just one of the three ingredients — vermouth for riesling, gin for sotol or rye, Campari for Cynar or St-Germain — can create a whole new profile while still presenting an overall recognizable Negroni format. Celebrity fans and campaigns have only further bolstered the drink's appeal: Anthony Bourdain called the Negroni the perfect mixed drink, and Imbibe Magazine established an annual "Negroni Week" in 2013 that still runs every September.