White Negroni

About the White Negroni

Take a Negroni, swap the usual red vermouth and Campari for pale, bitter alternatives, and you get the White Negroni, made here with Timber Creek Florida Gin, Lillet Blanc, and Suze. It keeps the original’s three-part structure and stirred, spirit-forward build, but trades the classic drink’s deep red color and dense bittersweet flavor for something paler, drier, and more herbaceous. Lillet Blanc contributes a honeyed, wine-like sweetness while Suze brings gentian root bitterness with a slightly earthy, almost medicinal edge, and the two balance each other out around the gin rather than layering sweetness on top of sweetness the way the traditional recipe does.

Timber Creek Florida Gin anchors the whole thing: distilled on its own and blended by component as part of the distillery’s PureBlend process, it carries a clean juniper backbone that keeps the drink from tasting like Lillet and Suze with a gin garnish, which is a real risk in a cocktail built from three roughly equal parts. Equal-parts cocktails like this one are unforgiving of a weak base spirit, and it is a good showcase of how much a gin’s underlying quality shows through when nothing else in the glass is there to hide it. To make it, stir all three ingredients with ice until properly chilled and diluted, then strain into a chilled coupe and finish with a fresh lemon twist expressed over the top.

The result is a cocktail equally suited to a slow evening on the porch or a more formal cocktail hour, and it pairs particularly well with savory, salty snacks that play off its bitterness rather than fighting it: olives, charcuterie, parmesan crisps, roasted almonds, or a piece of dark chocolate for something a bit richer. Because it’s stirred and served without dilution from ice in the glass, it drinks stronger than its pale color suggests, so it’s a good idea to pace it and enjoy it alongside food.

Take a Negroni, swap the usual red vermouth and Campari for pale, bitter alternatives, and you get the White Negroni, made here with Timber Creek Florida Gin, Lillet Blanc, and Suze. It keeps the original’s three-part structure and stirred, spirit-forward build, but trades the classic drink’s deep red color and dense bittersweet flavor for something paler, drier, and more herbaceous. Lillet Blanc contributes a honeyed, wine-like sweetness while Suze brings gentian root bitterness with a slightly earthy, almost medicinal edge, and the two balance each other out around the gin rather than layering sweetness on top of sweetness the way the traditional recipe does.

Timber Creek Florida Gin anchors the whole thing: distilled on its own and blended by component as part of the distillery’s PureBlend process, it carries a clean juniper backbone that keeps the drink from tasting like Lillet and Suze with a gin garnish, which is a real risk in a cocktail built from three roughly equal parts. Equal-parts cocktails like this one are unforgiving of a weak base spirit, and it is a good showcase of how much a gin’s underlying quality shows through when nothing else in the glass is there to hide it. To make it, stir all three ingredients with ice until properly chilled and diluted, then strain into a chilled coupe and finish with a fresh lemon twist expressed over the top.

The result is a cocktail equally suited to a slow evening on the porch or a more formal cocktail hour, and it pairs particularly well with savory, salty snacks that play off its bitterness rather than fighting it: olives, charcuterie, parmesan crisps, roasted almonds, or a piece of dark chocolate for something a bit richer. Because it’s stirred and served without dilution from ice in the glass, it drinks stronger than its pale color suggests, so it’s a good idea to pace it and enjoy it alongside food.