Bitter cocktails, with their enveloping and distinctive bitter flavour, are the most used ever. Great classics, with an ancient and curious story, they know how delight the palate of all mixology lovers.

Choosing the right cocktail can be difficult especially for people who approach for the first time to mixology; you can choose according to the main spirit, but often it’s difficult to associate a name and a flavour. In order to choose right you should pay attention to flavour. Someone prefers more bitter flavours, someone else, instead, prefers more sweet flavours.

If you are of the first group, here there are some alternatives perfect for your tastes: NIO Cocktails bitter selection.

NIO Cocktails are mixed with premium quality ingredients by our master mixologist Patrick Pistolesi.

Some of the high quality ingredients we choose for our bitter cocktails are:

• Vermouth Cocchi: one of the best vermouth, it is selected by the best bartender all over the world. It is also named Italian Vermouth and it is one of the sweet vermouth with amber colour. The original recipe includes the use of aromatic herbs such as cinchona and rhubarb, to which is added the sugar browned and warmed over the fire to dampen the distinctly bitter flavors. Among the characteristic flavors we find citrus, that contribute to give richness to the palate, along with notes of bitter cocoa.

• Bitter Campari: it’s an iconic and historic drink and its recipe is a secret also today. It was created at the beginning of the ‘900. It’s a symbol, especially for Milan and, from the Eighties it’s the icon of the traditional Italian aperitif. Its popularity never stops growing thanks to the famous advertising features that the company has created over the years. It’s a versatile drink, to drink alone, or to mix with other ingredients to create the best  Italian cocktails.

• Angostura: it is exquisitely bitter of ancient origins. It was born in South America and takes its name from the city where it was invented for the first time by a doctor who invented it exclusively in order to cure stomach pain. Only in the mid-nineteenth century, in London began to use Angostura to mix alcohol. Oggi viene prodotta nei Caraibi e solo pochissime persone conoscono la vera ricetta che si dice sia composta da più di 40 ingredienti che creano una miscela molto amara e fortemente alcolica.

NIO Cocktails bitter selection

Let’s talk about the story and the ingredients of bitter cocktails by NIO Cocktails.

They are perfect for your Christmas gifts, but also to cheer up your holidays nights! With NIO Cocktails you can enjoy your home aperitif in comfort because our cocktails are perfectly mixed and ready to share. You need ice only!

Negroni: the bitter cocktail par excellence.

Il Negroni, is the perfect cocktails for the traditional Italian aperitif. Negroni is the king of Cmpari cocktails and it can’t miss in a bitter cocktails selection. Its bitter flavour is produced by using Campari, Vermouth Cocchi and Angostura, perfectly mixed with Gin Tanqueray in order to create a perfect balance of flavours to enjoy the absolute relax of aperitif moment.

Negroni cocktail is one of the few that can be attributed with certainty history and origins. Florence 1919, maybe 1920. In those years, Count Camillo Negroni used to be at the aristocratic Caffè Casoni. One day he wanted something a little bit stronger than his usual Americano. So he asked the barman Fosco Scarselli to add into the drink a little bit of Gin rather than soda, in memory of his recent trips to London. This new cocktail became “The usuabouboulevardierl” for the Count but soon this became for everybody else the “American aperitif Count Negroni-style’. In the Fifties the cocktails became very popular in Italy and, soon, also all over the world.alo Ian Fleming cited the Negroni Cocktail in one of the episode of his famous saga James Bond.

Milano-Torino: Italian style and icon from the end of Nineteen century.

This is another iconic cocktails and a symbol of Italian mixology. The bitter flavour is strong and persistent obtained by adding Vermouth (from Turin) to Campari (form Milan).

It was created for the first time ate caffè Milano by Gaspare Campari in 1860 and it has been considered for many years a classical Campari cocktail. Milano-Torino contains only Vermouth from Turin and Campari from Milan in order to create its distinctive but balanced flavour, thank to the addition of Vermouth in order to attenuate the strong bitter flavour of Campari. Garnished with orange peel, Mi-To is a fresh and refined cocktails that will bring you back to the simplest times and tastes.

Boulevardier: elegance and mastery in an ancient cocktail.

With this cocktail we move to Paris, at Harry’s Bar, where the famous barman Harry McElhone created this cocktail for Erskine Gwyne. He, lately, made this cocktail famous thanks to his quote in “Barflies and Cocktails” published in 1927. Erskine was famous because his grandpa was the tycoon Alfred Vanderbilt and also because he founded a magazine called “Boulevardier”. This name comes from French and it meant a person “of the street” in its positive meaning.

Our master mixologist Patrick Pistolesi creates for NIO Cocktails a href="https://nio-cocktails.com/products/busta-boulevardier" target="_blank" title="cocktail_boulevardier" rel="noopener noreferrer">a Boulevardier cocktail made with: Whiskey Bourbon, Vermouth Cocchi, Bitter Campari and Angostura. They all together give a bitter and enveloping flavour to the cocktail.

Manhattan: bitter and whiskey for a cocktail you can’t miss in your home bar.

Il Manhattan is one of the most famous cocktail all over the world and it’s perfect for the after dinner. It was mixed for the first time in 1870 at Manhattan Club by Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother. The cocktail became very famous all over the world. It was bar in America but also became famous also in Europe, probably due to its name which perfectly represent the Big Apple in a glass.

Also Manhattan has a distinctive bitter flavour due to Vermouth Cocchi and Angostura, matched to Whiskey Bourbon Bulleit in order to make it more enveloping and classy.

If you’d like to try NIO Cocktails bitter selection build your box here!

Cheers!