• Baskets for the Holidays
• Join us for a Salt Tasting Class, Bitters and Vermouth Class, or a Chocolate and Wine Class
• Seven New Salt Blocks are Back in Stock
• Parameswaran’s Black and White Pepper is back!
• Drink- NewWine, Bitters, and Syrups:
  • World-Class Bitters – Add something special to your mixed drinks
  • Over 90 differentwines
  • Syrups by Robert Lambert
• Also, The Meadow’s salted chocolates are back on the shelves, and in force! Below, our 75% dark chocolate from São Tomé, combined with six different artisan salts. Available in the shop and online here>>

Baskets

Celebrate fall or warm up for winter with a basket of everything you need. A combination of salt, wine, chocolate & flowers will keep you in the pink as the weather cools. Pick from our own selection of pre-designed baskets, or put together one for yourself. Click here to start assembling your perfect basket.

Plus, baskets are handy for packing or storing things, and Mark has a bunch of new salts (somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen), so if you haven’t tried Kona or Timbuktu or Fiori di Trapani, come by and we’ll sort you out with something new.

Three New Classes at The Meadow

The Meadow will host three public classes in November and December. If you would like to arrange a private event, give us a call!

Bitters and Vermouth – 11/23/2009 – Bitters and vermouth, the two powerhouses of flavor in the world ofcocktail mixing. Gone are the days when a sticky bottle ofsupermarket-industrial vermouth gathered dust in the back of thecupboard, and the bitters bottle lurked eternally, an ancient thingforgotten in the shadows.

The Meadow now offers a huge selectionof the finest artisan bitters of the world: cardamom, whisky barrel,celery, rhubarb, lavender, and many more! And vermouths, from the gentlecaress of Dolin dry to the volcanic passion of Punt e Mes, there is nobetter way to take your drinks to their limits of flavor, aroma, andbody. This tasting class will take in the new vista of artisan-madebitters and vermouths, discuss how and why they’re made, and dive into waysto use them to their full potential. Must be 21 years of age to attend!Plenty of sipping included.

Monday, November 23, 2009 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm – $25 – Remember to print out your online receipt and bring it with you for admittance.

Click here to purchase tickets for this class>>

Artisan Salt Tasting – 11/9/2009 – Once you start to think about salt as a strategic ingredient in your cooking, everything changes. This class will explore how to take advantage of the unique character of artisan salts, from the classic fleur de sel to the novel smoked salt. During a survey of the basic types of artisansalt we’ll discuss novel but immensely effective approaches to using salt in every food from snacks like popcorn and guacamole, to dinners like leg of lamb and mushroom risotto, to desserts like tarte tatin and semifreddo. And we won’t forget cocktails. The event now includes a demonstration of cooking on Himalayan Salt Blocks. The class is accompanied by wine, plus there’s always a bite of chocolate to send you off into the night. Space is verylimited, so sign up quick!

Monday, November 9, 2009 – 6:00pm to 7:30pm – $20 – Remember to print out your online receipt and bring it with you for admittance.

Click here to purchase tickets for this class>>

Chocolate, from Bean to Bar- 12/7/2009 – The chocolate bar: dark and impenetrable, an immaculate mystery wrappedin silver foil. Chocolate bars are the ultimate way to experience thefull complexity of chocolate, and the only way to explore theinnumerable variations in color, aroma, mouth-feel, and flavor. Join usfor an exploration of chocolate, from the humble bean slipping aroundinside the silken purse of a cacao pod in a tropical rainforest to themasterpieces in dark and milk chocolate calling like polychrome parrotsfrom the shelves of your favorite chocolate shops. We’ll tastechocolate in its various forms along the way, savor the art of seriouschocolate tasting, and finish with a few creative ideas for enjoying onyour own. Wine included.

Monday, December 7, 2009 – 7:00pm – 8:30pm – $25 – Remember to print out your online receipt and bring it with you for admittance.

Click here to purchase tickets for this class>>

Seven Salt Blocks Fresh in from the Salt Mines!

Seven of our most popular salt blocks are now back in stock and ready for your fruit, cheese, fish, steak, sushi, salads, and more. We carry the widest selection of salt plates, platters, bricks, and bowls in the world so that you can find the perfect block for your culinary needs.

Wholesale supplies available.

2×2x2 Cubes
9×9x2 Extra Large Blocks
8×8x2 Large Blocks
8×4x0.75 Serving Trays
8×2x0.75 Sushi Sticks
6×9x2 Large Tiles
4×4x4 Large Cubes

Parameswaran’s Pepper is Back in Stock!

Playful and a touch wild, but sophisticated and regal, like a Ferris wheel in the Tuilleries of Paris, crack this pepper and release the unfathomable depths of the world’s greatest pepper. Parameswaran’s Black Pepper is a mixture of Karimunda and Panniyor varieties of black pepper, specially selected for their flavor and quality. The vines grow up to 30 to 40 feet high on host trees (silver oaks) and are harvested only when fully ripened on the vine. A vine may
be harvested 10 to 12 times by men who climb bamboo poles made specially to prevent damage to the vines. After drying and cleaning, the pepper is immediately packed on the plantation to preserve its peak flavor.

Each jar of Parameswaran’s Black Pepper is about six inches tall and includes whole stems with the peppercorns still attached. Just put the pepper, stem and all, into your pepper mill and you’re good to go! Click here to buy.
We think it’s in a class by itself, the finest black pepper in the world.

Parameswaran’s White Pepper is more intense, with clear, wonderful floral notes setting it in a class by itself among white peppers. It comes from ripe (black) berries that are soaked in daily changes of spring water for 20 days before the outer black husk is removed. The result is an entirely different, fresher range of flavors and an almost imperceptibly more aggressive heat. We can’t get enough. Try it on melted goat cheese & frisée salad and Marlborough Flakey sea salt. Click here to buy.

New Artisan Bitters on the Shelves, Plus Wines Now Available Online

With colder months ahead of us and the fixing for grandma’s roast hen with winter roots suddenly suddenly back in the fridge (salted with sel gris!), it’s time to think of the wines that will bring comfort and spice to your meals. We’ve expanded our selection in the last few weeks, and brought most everything we carry to our website to boot. Over 90 new wines are up online, and we’re working on reviews for each. Please feel free to share your thoughts!

We’ve also continued to expand our selection of artisan bitters. Cocktails, coffee, ice cream, waffle batter, sauces, you name it, bitters offer amazing ways to make fun and creative new dishes, or add a special extra flavor to your cocktails. Celery, chocolate, lavender, peach, orange, and more – we have the tartness, zest, sweetness, and pungency you need to make your drinks distinctive and lively. Click here to see our full selection.

We hope to see you in the shop or at a class!
Jennifer & Mark Bitterman

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland Or

Please join us for two great salt classes at The Meadow:
Himalayan Salt Block Cooking Class July 27th, 2009
Int roduction to Artisan Salt Monday, August 5th, 2009

Also, The Meadow’s salted chocolates are back in stock, and back in force! Below, our 75% dark chocolate from São Tomé, combined
with six different artisan salts. Available in the shop and online here>>

Himalayan Salt Block Cooking
Spend an evening cooking and serving a variety of foods, from cold appetizers and snacks to sautéed
vegetables and meats to an unusual dessert. Heating, cleaning, and storage will also be discussed. We’ll
also explore the opportunities to create new flavor combinations by shaving Himalayan pink salt with salt graters.
Class includes includes snacks, wine, and an in-depth discussion of everything you ever wanted to know (and everything
you never knew you always wanted to know), about salt!
July 27th ~ 7pm to 8:30pm ~ $30 per person ~ Reserve now>>

Introduction to Artisan Salt
Learn the tricks to using artisan salt to make every food you eat pop with flavor, texture, and better nutrition.
With a glass of wine in hand, we’ll explore the astonishing powers of artisan salt. Discussion also will touch on the
perils of using industrially-made salts, from iodized table salt to kosher salt. Our trek will take us across the seas
where six artisan-made salts are made, and explore how they can be used as finishing salts and curing salts,
in cooking and in brining, and more. The event includes wine.
August 5th ~7pm to 8:30pm ~ $20 per person ~ Reserve now>>

We hope to see you there!
Jennifer & Mark Bitterman

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland OR

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Salt Class May 18: Howto Cook with Artisan Salt

Learn the principles and practicals to using artisan salt. With a glass of wine in hand, we will explore theastonishing
potency, beauty, and nutritional value of unrefined salt. Discussionwill range from the perils of using industrially-made salts
to the pleasure and importance of hand-harvested sea salts. The class will cover six artisan-made salts, from cooking to
finishing, from breakfast to dessert. We willalso talk about how to cook with Himalayan pink salt blocks. To conclude the
evening, we will taste a favorite dark chocolate selected from our collecton of nearly 300 chocolate bars.

Space is extremely limited, so please sign up now!

Monday, May 18- 6:30pm to 8pm – $15 per person – click to reserve>>

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland OR

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Forgot to mention, we’re open at 9AM on Mother’s Day!
(and, below, some unexpected news)

The breathtakingly beautiful salt marshes of Ile de R

Everybody wants love, especially your Mom!

We adore tomatoes (these ones we picked up at Marche Aligre on our recent trip to Paris), but flowers make for
better delivery. Let us arrange for flowers to be delivered to you mother anywhere in the U.S. and beyond. We also offer
great optionsfor local delivery, like Flowers & Champagne, or Flowers & Chocolate, or even Flowers & Chocolate&
Artisan Salt! Call us (503-288-4633 or toll free 888-388-4633), or visit online. We’ll also have buckets of fresh flowers
in the shop, so come by and pick something up!

Salt Class May 18th

Bring your mother with you on a trek across the vast and unexplored wilds of artisan-made finishing salts.
We will discuss six artisan-made finishing salts and explore how they combine to bring greater flavor, beauty,
and nutritionto your table, from breakfast todinner, from cocktails to dessert. The event includes wine.
Space is limited, so sign up now!

Monday, May 18- 6:30pm to 8pm – $15 per person – click to reserve>>

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland OR

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TheMeadow is spending April in Europe! We are visiting salt works across France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Wewould love your recommendation for places to see, people to visit, and things toeat. Visit www.saltnews.com to see our route, andplease submit your suggestions in the comments! You can follow our trip inreal time on Twitter at twitter.com/Selmelier. Other news below.

Photo courtesy of the generous and talented Ms. Lesley Trites.

While we are gone, our wonderful staffwill be holding down the fort. Please visit them so they don’t get lonely. Ifyou haven’t stopped by in a while, check out the Chocolina Sheep’s Milk and PinkPeppercorn chocolate. On the brooding and buttery, coffee-rich side, thereis the new 70% Rio Carribe bar by Rogue. Not to mention, some great new wines, suchas the Hacienda Don Ramon 2006 from Rioja, plus enduring favoriteslike the Cuvee des Ardoises 2004 from Fitou. As always, plenty of salt. Trymaking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with Bali Rama, a large hollowpyramidal crystal salt from Bali: as beautiful as they are delicious.An easy recipe and tasty photographs thereof at www.saltnews.com.

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland OR

The beauty of the common Cesar Salad (Caesarius banalus) is that it give us everything we crave: saltiness (from the parmesian or pecorino cheese), crunchiness from the lettuce, and of course, creaminess, which reminds us of those cherished days when mom and dad would go out on a much needed date and leave us at home with a perky young babysitter and a warm oven full of defrosted chicken pot pies. Like so much in our diet, the Cesar Salad is kids food gussied up for show at the adult diningroom table.

All aforementioned legal formalities dispensed with, it goes without saying that Caesar is the king of salads, conquering nations and enslaving its people. The Caesar: assertive garlic, citrus, and pepper on tumescent greens glistening under a dewey veil the color of cornsilk. I am here to praise the Caesar Salad not to bury it.

My Caesar Salad is–not to put too fine a point on it–the best available, anywhere, ever, provided you are not in the mood for rice crispy treat gooey mac and cheese nostalgia. Obviously if you have a last name with more syllables than your lungs have wind to power, like Vongerichten or if you have at your disposal a stable of the world’s most passionate sous chefs and “a privately owned auberge situated in the French Huguenot valley of Franschhoek” and chicken eggs raised on grubs fed from the chef’s virgin daughter’s own lips, maybe, just maybe you can compete with my Cesar Salad in the eyes of wax-twisted moustachiod restaurant critics–but your sous chefs will still be sitting at my peasant’s table. Fighting words.

To make the best Cesar Salad, one delicate enough to precede almost any meal yet hearty enough to suffice as meal in itself:

1. Cut three or four slices of Como or other firm crusty European-style white bread into cubes and set on cookie sheet
2. Set cookie sheet with bread cubes in oven at 350 degrees
3. Squeeze 2 small-ish or 1 1/2 medium-ish lemons into a quart mason jar
4. Crack 1 free-yard, bug fed chicken’s egg into the jar
5. Press 2 or 3 cloves garlic into jar (the only excuse for owning a garlic press is Cesar Dressing)
6. Mince three or four Scalia anchovy filets and add to jar (Scalia are the best Cesar Salad dressing anchovies I have ever enountered–nutty, buttery, delicately perfume, bringing richness and balance where no (or few) other jarred, salted, or fresh-marinated anchovies can compare).
7. Arrange remaining anchovies on a plate from which guests may serve themselves
8. Pour olive oil remaining in anchoy jar into the mason jar
9. Crack 2 or 3 teaspoons good black pepper (like Parameswaran’s pepper) into the jar
10. Add 1 teaspoon good red wine vinegar (a TOP SECRET secret that I can’t believe I am sharing with the likes of Vongerichten and Ripert and Waters). I am crazy about Toro Albala, which may or may not be available in the future
11. The jar is now filled about 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch of liquid, mostly acid parts of the dressing. It is time for the oil. Here comes another TOP SECRET tip that assures a salad that is both light and full flavored:
12. Add 1 part grape seed oil and 1 part very good but not absurdly expensive olive oil (I use Almazara Luis Herrera Aceite de Lagrima Olive Oil, which has great fruit and vegetable and floral notes). The two parts combined should just-less-than-double the amount of liquid in the jar, so you should now have something like 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches of liquid in the jar, total. Keeping the amount of oil lower than the amount of acid brings the balance we are looking for, and cutting the amount of olive oil in half creates a beautiful lightness to the body/mouthfeel of the dressing
13. Tighten top onto the jar and shake like mad for 15 seconds to blend and emulsify
14. Turn bread crumbs on cookie sheet to brown more evenly
15. Wash and dry 1 head of very good romain lettuce, preferably from your garden or a local Farmer’s Market
16. Break letuce into a large salad bowl in pieces small enough to to toss but big enough to be a hassle (cutting down on the pretension level of the salad while still leaving you with a substantial piece of green to cut and fork and crunch and occasionally make a mess with while you eat)
17. Grate 1/2 cup good Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and set aside. Parmigiano Reggiano is ideal because it is less salty, more nutty, and more delicate than cheap parmisan cheese or most commonly available pecorino cheeses
18. Remove bread cubes from oven and let cool, observing that they are now a toasty golden color, and formidably hard and brittle
19. Shake dressing again for a few seconds, and then spoon from the bottom (to help get some of the bits of garlic and anchovy) onto the salad and toss until all leaves are nicely coated
20. Add bread cubes to fill around 3/4 of the mason jar containing the remaining dressing, and turn jar back and forth a few times to soak the cubes in the dressing
21. Sprinkle half the grated parmisan cheese on the leaves and toss to distribute evenly
22. Turn mason jar to re-coat bread cubes.
23. When the cubes have soaked up all the dressing, pour them over the greens and toss
24. Serve the salad onto large plates, and sprinkle lightly with some of the remaining parmesan
25. Advise guests not to shy away serving themselves additional anchovies

The amount of garlic and pepper can be adjusted to taste, but I advise even the most ardent anchovy avoiders to use the full amount of anchovies, especially if they are good ones, as they are responsible for they are largely responsible for the majesty of the Caesar Salad.

Serve with dry white wine or classic provencal rosé wine.

On the way home we had dropped by Autentica, a restaurant serving up traditional Mexican food inspired by the cuisine of Guerrero Mexico, where owner and Executive Chef Oswaldo Bibiano grew up.

Sitting at the counter of the open kitchen, we ordered two of their nicer tequilas of the silver persuasion, a delicate and light I forget what and a warm, smooth, fruity I forget what (sorry). Chef Bibiano recommended we try fish, the filete de pescado con oro verde ($19), which today was lingcod served over a fresh avocado sauce and a jicama salad. “Fresh and spicy and clean – great the hot day today.

It was getting to be dusk, the sky was scudding a few faint clouds outside the windows, and we were probably a little hopped up from a chili pepper infused tequila Margarita at our previous stop, Toro Bravo.

We ordered the bisteck de bola con chile mole ($20), which is a grilled cascade sirloin steak served over a traditional dried chile sauce with a side of sautéed fresh cactus. I guess because we were supposed to be “hopping” restaurants and not actually eating at them, we also kept it light by ordering the espinaca con limon ($8): “spinach tossed with spicy lime juice, red onions, cilantro and avocado.”

The food arrived: salad a tall haystack of spinach ribbons laced with a startling, citrusy dressing and crunchy-sweet macerated onions. We were, totally blown away. Dag nabbit if this was not the best spinach salad I have ever had in my life. The steak was done perfectly, tender, lounging atop and in a powerfully spicy and full flavored sauce. Three nice salsas and a basket of tortillas hot off the hands of the tortillarista (my tortilla barista) working at the far end of the kitchen.

So, halfway through the little snack we were supposed to be having before bopping off home, we ordered the fish (and another tequila and a Pacifico to keep us afloat). The fish arrived, piping hot and flakey and not-flakey-because-it-was-also-tender-and-chunky atop cool sauce with crisp vegetables atop it. Atop is a nice word.

The fish was beautiful, super subtle but also super flavorful: angelfire and friskiness to the steak’s demonic flood of brooding. When I was a kid I lived in Mexico, ate catfish gifted to me by the lake fishermen, bought steamed corn with lime and chili powder from the passing senoras, played with sparklers in the houses of neighbors, shutters drawn to make sparkly night in the daytime. How you take onions and spinach and lime and turn that into the fragments another time I cannot say. But it was a good spinach salad.

When Columbus discovered America he was said to preen and prance about in a very annoying, prissy, practiced way that only tights-clad and ruffled Italian discoverers seem to be able to preen and prance: Look at me everybody, I discovered an entire new world! I’ll even call it The New World! It’s mine. I discovered it.
Never mind that millions of people already lived there, that civilizations had risen and fallen and risen again successively at least since the Olmecs carved their first squat stone heads some two millennia earlier. Never mind chocolate (which gave Europe a new outlook on everything from social intercourse to sexual intercourse), corn (which saved the Italians from culinary turpitude and possible starvation) to Turkey (which gave the French century of gloating over the fabled truffled). Well, the discovery of the discovery of the Sbagliato is mine. Ho scoperto. E ‘il mio.

Without further ado: the Sbagliato Saga

Chapter I : Negronilithic Era

Here is the world’s first and only in-depth, category-killing, ultimate Sbagliato recipe. Sit on my knee, and listen, young apprentice. There is some ink to spill and some drinks to pour before we arrive at our final destination.

Sbagliato: bubbly, ruby red, herbaceous and bitter, beading condensation down the ice-cold sides of a rocks glass — one more reason to lament the brevity of the Oregon summer. The challenge here, on a rather hot, definitely languid Monday afternoon, will to abstain from drinking one or two before finishing this post.

The Sbagliato cocktail (it took me a few minutes of brainstorming my spelling options after returning from Tuscany, so I’ll document for posterity sake that it is definitely not spelled spaghettliotto (which is what occasionally slipped out when ordering it), not sbagliatto cocktail, not spagliotto (which I usually said when ordering it), not sbalgioto, not s’baglliottto, and not subactillio.  It is also not a spagliato cocktail, or spagliatto, spaglioto or spagliotto). Once you get over the hump of spelling Sbagliato, it’s all down hill.

FYI, the Americans call it a Negroni Sbagliato, which seemed lost on the Italians who have been mistakening it for decades. A Negroni Sbagliato cocktail recipe seems a bit obtuse. Would you like a fish filet of sole for dinner? I guess Americans like certainty in their food; honestly, “buffalo chicken wings?” Why do people say that? I honestly doubt it is likely to get some Griffin-like hairy flapping buffalo dish for dinner if you just say “buffalo wings.”

The Sbagliato cocktail begins with the Negroni cocktail, and is one of the very few, if not the only, example in history of a knock-off cocktail that rivals the original. Imagine, if you will, that the original episodes of Star Wars never indulged in Muppets or dwarfs in panda suits. The Sbagliato cocktail is the Empire Strikes Back, sans muppets, of the Negroni. Negroni sbagliato… Besides, it’s fun to watch Italians’ faces as they try to parse the juxtaposition of lousy Italian accent and suave, discerning drink order: “un sbagliato per favore,” you bumble, with no further elaboration.

To skip straight from following a standard Sbagliato recipe to making the best dang Sbagliato imaginable, it is necessary to first master the Negroni cocktail.

The classic Negroni consists of:
1 part gin
1 part sweet vermouth
1 part Campari
Combine all three ingredients in an Old Fashioned (rocks) glass over ice and garnish with a slice of orange.
The Negroni invented Florence in 1919 by the no-nonsense Count Camillo Negroni, who found himself in need of something stiffer than an Americano (made with Campari, Sweet Vermouth, and seltzer), and asked for gin with his Americano. One can only wonder why he wasn’t made a Marquis.

So, how do we improve on the Count’s excellent work?

The ultimate Negroni cocktail derives its superiority from three improvements:
1. improving the quality of the ingredients
2. tuning the amount of gin
3. serving it chilled and up

Ingredients:
Gin: Use gin that is good, but not great. Use a good sturdy gin like Tanqueray or Beefeater or Bombay (not Sapphire — too strong). You don’t want the Karmic debt of mucking up great gin with a bunch of highly flavorful additives. Don’t raid your mom’s secret stash of Hendrick’s or Plymouth or Baffert’s or Magellan or Citadelle or Quintessential or G’Vine. You get no extra points for gin erudition, snobbiness, etc. Remember, we are going for a drink that a Count would drink, and as we all know, Counts are born cool and debonair without even trying.

Vermouth: Use good Sweet Vermouth. Here, sky is the limit. Sweet Vermouth is indispensable to every drinker, from the dilettante who prefers it straight, over ice, on a porch swing, to the serious drinker, who prefers it with bourbon and bitters, chilled an served up in a martini glass on a porch swing. We go through a 750ml bottle Sweet Vermouth (Vermouth Rosso) every month or so, but when we finally get around to putting up a porch swing we hope to improve on that quantity substantially. My favorite Sweet Vermouth these days is Andy Quady’s creation,Vya Sweet Vermouth. Andy is not only not Italian, he is not even a Count. But his Vermouth kicks. We sell it at The Meadow, where it serves as fodder for many a tirade on mixology. Carpano Antica Vermouth Rosso is another great option. Do not use Carpano’s Punt e Mes, as it will steamroller the Campari, the gin, and the surrounding countryside.

Campari: That’s it–Campari. I’ve dug around a bit in Italy, and if there is a better, more boutique type production of a Campari-style bitters I have yet to find it.

Tuning: Adding more gin gives the Vermouth and Campari room to move around in, revealing greater depth to their intense herbacious, citrus, spice notes. Like an experienced lover, the additional gin inspires our cocktail to impart its secrets with passion bridled by solicitousness.

Serving: Following Count Negroni’s lead, we whittle down even more the amount of dilutant in the drink, serving it up. The ultimate Negroni experiences only a brief tryst with water, during its gentle chilling. Diaphanous contrails of icewater swirl through the cocktail, imparting the silky mouthfeel of that godlike cocktail, the gin martini. This essential variation on the classic Negroni cocktail boasts the added advantage of a built in requirement that you drink it rapidly, and by extension, repeatedly.

The ultimate Negroni cocktail consists of:
2 to 3 parts good gin
1 part good sweet vermouth
1 part Campari
Combine all three over ice cubes in a shaker. Stir gently. Do not shake, do not beat it to death, do not stir it like you’re trying to make whipped cream. Bartenders brutalize their gin, either because they think it looks showy, or because they are in a hurry, or maybe because they think exploding a perfectly good drink into shards of ice and bubbles makes them look especially virile. Stir gently, for about 10 seconds. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Twist with orange zest, so that some of that lovely volatile orange oil beads and glistens on the surface of the drink. Garnish with the pretty curlicue you have made with the orange zest.

Now, my quiet student, you are ready for the Sbagliato.

Chapter II: Enter the Sbagliato

Sbagliato translates literally as “mistaken.” So, armed with our firm grasp of the fullest potential of the Negroni, we screw everything up with the goal of landing a more easily quaffable drink, that we might drink greater quantities, extract more romance from our summertime, and exist in a more robustly hydrated state for a longer period of time, before falling off the porch swing.

Directions for making a Sbagliato. (If you have friends, you make Sbagliati, meaning more than one.)

Great mistakes are earned. To make a mistaken, take what you have learned here, and… go back. Go way back. Go back to your rocks glass full of ice. Go way, way back. Take the gin out, much as it might hurt to do so. Go so far back that nobody knows what the heck you are talking about. Back to the bubbly than originally inspired the Negroni (see the digression below).

Back in the 1860s, the Negroni was invented by a fellow by the name of Gaspare Campari, a maitre licoriste from Turin who remarried to a dame from Milan, and eventually settled there to become the happy proprietor of his very own Café Campari. In a show of grace and diplomacy (Milan and Turin have been known to tussle like cats tangled in guitar strings over the least trifle), Gaspare Campari combined Cinzano sweet vermouth, his own precious Campari bitters, and splash of seltzer, and served it to patrons of his café, calling it the “Milano-Torino.” The drink was later called the Americano in appreciation (here I am making things up) for all the wonderful gastronomic delights we had brought to their country, such as sugar (which gave them gelato), corn (which gave them polenta), and Coke (which gave many of them a preference for Coke over bitter liqueurs).

The Sbagliato is takes the best part of the seltzer water so dashingly abolished by Count Negroni so many years ago: the bubbles. The Sbaglioto invented by mistaking bubbly prosecco for club soda. Taking our adventure in Negroni-land to heart, but going back in time, we need only substitute out the gin for the prosecco, and add back the ice. And so, at last, we have the wherewithal to make our dreamy Sbagliato .

Good Prosecco: I use Adriano Adami’s Garbel Prosecco 13, which is moussy with a nice bubbly resilience in the mouth. Adami Garbel has wonderful delicate floral and tart fruit notes up front, and great sweeter fruits going down. All around, the Adami is a perfectly balanced Prosecco (and much better than many of the ones I was served in Italy in my Sbaglioto quest) for your Sbaglioto cocktail.

The Perfect Sbagliato Cocktail Recipe
4 parts Prosecco
1 part Sweet Vermouth
1 part Campari
Pour Prosecco over ice in rocks glass, add Campari and Sweet Vermouth, and stir gently. Do not insult the Prosecco abusively vigorous stirring. Like the Negroni and the Martini before it, you want your drink to have a body you can fall in love with. Garnish with a wheel of fresh orange that is first half-squeezed into the glass. Sip slowly from the rim, listening to the summer-song of ice cubes kissing, feeling the chilled liquid on you lips, letting your gaze dissolve and refract through the deeps, as if through the ruby bellybutton gem of a Moroccan harlot.

Footnotes

Digression on Sweet Vermouth: In 1757 in a back room of the family herbal shop where their mixologist pop Giovanni Cinzano had already built a reputation with brandies and liqueurs, brothers Giovanni Giacomo and Carlo Stefano Cinzano, giggling like madmen, combined dozens of aromatic plants from the Italian Alps, including marjoram, thyme, and musk yarrow to make something they thought might not kill people like so many other medicines of the time. The result was Vermouth Rosso, which was remarkably palatable given that the whole concept of Vermouth was dubious. Vermouth sprung from a desire to make really, really bad white wine more palatable. The Italians’ Vermouth mania (the epicenter of which was in Turin) was actually inspired by efforts north of the border in Germany’s Savoy to make their really, really bad wine more palatable by adding wormwood (Wermut), various varieties of which has been used for about 2000 years to make everything from medicine to drugs to liqueurs such as Absinthe.

Digression on Campari: Campari is, by law, required to be consumed exclusively on porch swings. As fun as it can be to drink over ice, it does benefit from the addition of bubbly, such as seltzer, or in Paris, Perrier. It is strong, a bit syrupy, and if the use of seltzer or Perrier conflicts with your moral stance on use of water, gin is also a kosher option. Some decades after the Turinos fell for vermouth, across the sweltering plains of Lombardy in Milan, Gaspare Campari experimented with quinine, about 50 to 60 bitter herbs, rhubarb, spices, ginseng, bergamot oil, orange peel, and above all, bark from Cascarilla trees to create a masterpiece in the tradition of bitter liqueurs. Gaspare had been an apprentice licoriste since he was knee high to a grasshopper (age 14), and must have been a prodigious drinker by the time he was old enough to give birth to the fullest fruit of his genius. It is possible Campari’s Bright red (the color comes form natural Carmine Cochineal in the original formulation which, I think, is still used in Italy), bitter, tangy, and obviously complex, it can be imbibed over ice, with soda, with orange juice, and in a variety of cocktails. Today only Luca Garavoglia, Chairman of the now very large Gruppo Campari company, knows the entire recipe, and only a small band of insider employees are allowed to make the base concentrate that is exported around to world.