Florentine Freeze

Why This Recipe Works

For scorching summer days, we wanted to create a frozen riff on the classic Negroni, which is traditionally equal parts Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth. To lighten up the strong flavors a bit, we opted to use fruit juice in place of the vermouth. In testing several varieties of juice, tasters unanimously preferred citrus, and specifically orange juice, since the sweet flavor of the orange juice tempered both the herbal spiciness of Campari and the botanical notes of the gin. But simply dumping a lot of ice into the blender along with the juice and other ingredients resulted in a disappointingly soupy, decidedly unslushy concoction. A trick we learned during our testing of frozen drinks was to swap out fresh juice in favor of frozen concentrate. So we tried that here, and the orange juice concentrate added its sweet flavor to the Campari and gin while at the same time helping to create the proper smoothly icy texture without excess dilution of flavor.