The first book from Brigadoon Studios is here.
A few years ago, in Terminal 3 at SFO, I ordered a Negroni. It was bad. Wrong glass, wrong proportions, the kind of pour you get in a place nobody chooses and everybody just passes through. I drank it anyway.
The woman sitting next to me watched the whole thing and said two words: "Bold choice."
She was right, though not the way she meant it. The drink was a mistake. Ordering it there, expecting anything, was the bold part. That's when I started paying attention — not to the Negroni, but to the rooms where it shows up.
Today that attention becomes a book.
One drink. Fifty bars. Three ingredients — mostly.
50 Negronis is the same drink ordered at fifty bars across twenty-nine cities, nine countries, and four continents. Equal parts gin, Campari, sweet vermouth. The recipe never changes, but it always does.
That's the whole trick. Because the recipe is fixed, it cancels out.
What's left is the variable: the bartender's hands, the light at four in the afternoon, the regular who won't move from his stool, the city outside the door. Local ingredients and tweaks. The Negroni is just the control in the experiment.
The first Negroni that mattered was at Hotel Il Pellicano. The one that solidified this project was the bad one at SFO. Between those two pours is the idea the book is built on — that a drink you can't change is the best possible way to see everything around it that does.
Not a ranking
This is not a ranking. Nobody wins. I'm not going to tell you the best Negroni in the world, because that's not an interesting question.
The interesting question is what fifty versions of the same three ounces can tell you about fifty places — and that's the book.
Volume One
50 Negronis is the first title from Brigadoon Studios. It's Volume One, which means there's more coming, and it means the project doesn't end on the page. If you order the drink somewhere worth remembering, send it our way with the tag #50Negronis.
The book is available now.
Enjoy the ride + Plan accordingly.
-Marc
