I have been on a serious Apéritif and Digestif kick recently! Hopefully I’m not alone in this love affair with these sweet, bitter, and herbaceous liqueurs. They add lots of complexity to a drink even with minimal ingredients. They are however one of those items that are hard to find “substitutes” for when it comes to specific brands because almost all of them are secret recipes of multiple herbs and taste very different from one another. This recipe, named after the year it was first sold, uses Suze, a French bitter liqueur made primarily of Gentian. It has wonderful bitter herb notes with candied orange and vanilla. Suze was released by Ferdinand Moureaux at the Paris Worlds Fair and was made famous by Pablo Picasso’s Verre et bouteille de Suze. I had a bunch of citrus that was going to waste so I juiced 4 blood oranges, 2 lemons, and 2 grapefruit into a jar to jazz up this twist on the classic Negroni. Enjoy!

Ingredients

1oz Suze

1oz Venus #1 Gin

1oz Carpano Bianco Vermouth

1/2oz Triple Citrus Juice

Garnish: Grapefruit Peel and Luxardo Cherry

Grab a cocktail shaker and pour in the Suze, gin, vermouth, and juice. Add ice and then shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Place a large ice cube in an old fashioned glass and strain the mixture into the glass. Garnish with the grapefruit peel and cherry.

Notes

You can use a standard orange instead of a blood orange if it’s what’s available it just won’t have that pretty red juice. You can use your preferred gin, but it works best if it’s not a London dry gin.