Sour Cherry Negroni

Just when you thought the Negroni couldn’t get any better, sour cherry enters the equation. The Sour Cherry Negroni is an icon on the cocktail menu at Hawksmoor in New York City, the New York City outpost of the UK-based restaurant group, whose menus focus primarily on high-quality steak. The bar menu at Hawksmoor NYC is helmed by Adam Montgomerie who worked at Hawksmoor London for multiple years before crossing the pond. 

“Hawksmoor’s been open for 17 years and cocktails have always been a huge part of what we do,” says Montgomerie. Montgomerie admits that New York is in many ways the home of the cocktail, so when brainstorming the bar menu at Hawksmoor NYC, Montgomerie innovated on some of the cocktail recipes on the original menus. Since the new location was set to open in March of 2020, right when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered restaurants nationwide, Montgomerie was granted some unforeseen extra time to spend on recipe and development. “One of the drinks we brought over from the UK was a Sour Cherry Americano, and I thought a Negroni would fit better on the menu,” he says. 

Unlike the Americano, a comparatively lower ABV (alcohol by volume) cocktail, made with Campari, sweet vermouth, and club soda, the Negroni features gin instead of club soda. Gin, Montgomerie explains, is king in the UK, and is the spirit that anchors most bar menus there. In Montgomerie’s Sour Cherry Negroni, he leans on Ford’s Gin, a London Dry style that features nine botanicals. The gin gets paired with the classic Negroni ingredients, Campari and vermouth, in this case Martini Rubio, for a rich, sweet flavor. There's also Tempus Fugit Creme de Noyaux, an apricot and cherry liqueur, and a modified cherry juice. 

At the bar, Montgomerie adds powdered malic and citric acids to organic cherry juice to modify the amount of acid in the juice before mixing it into the cocktail. At home, you can use a bit of citric acid to the cherry juice to mimic Hawksmoor’s original. The Sour Cherry Negroni is the perfect mix of sweet, sour, and bitter with a lovely deep red hue and the most delicious garnish—a cocktail pick skewered with cherries, of course.  -- Lucy Simon