Cocktail of the Week: Garibaldi

Garibaldi

If you can cast your mind to September, and this blog, you might remember a post I made on the Grapefruit Garibaldi cocktail. I enjoyed that cocktail quite a bit, enough to look up the original and make a note to return to at some point. It took a little longer than I wanted. Vacation and New York City cocktails got in the way. So, what would be a perfect fall cocktail seems a little out of place as we move into the chill of winter! Oh well!

The Garibaldi is named after Italian General Giuseppe Garibaldi who played a pivotal role in the unification of Italy and is considered one of the country’s founding fathers. This drink takes its name from the popular historical figure’s red shirt and is inspired by its crimson ingredients. It is believed the cocktail was invented at the beginning of the 20th century, by mixing all-Milanese Capari with orange juice, the symbolic fruit of Sicily, where Garibaldi’s red-clad men landed in 1860 to liberate it and annex the island what would soon become the newly constituted Italian state.

Garibaldi
The ingredients

Garibaldi

  • 1 oz. Campari
  • 3 oz. Fresh orange juice

Fill old fashioned glass with ice. Add Campari and top with orange juice. Stir. Garnish with half slice of orange.

Garibaldi

This drink tastes as lovely as it looks. Sweet orange citrus with a slight bitter bite. I sat on my back porch last night watching the sunset sipping this drink hoping that through the act I might invoke an Indian Summer but it doesn’t seemed to have worked. Next time I’ll just have one in Sicily during the Mediterranean summer. Yeah, that sounds about right.

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