Toast of the Town: Vancouver's Inception Negroni

This week's Toast of the Town comes from Prohibition at The Rosewood Hotel Georgia in Vancouver. Read on for details about the Inception Negroni.

At Prohibition, two forward-thinking bartenders have created a cocktail that's taking the innovative ice trend to the next level. The Inception Negroni uses a technique that traps a classic Negroni inside a perfect ice sphere. After the separate Negroni recipe is poured, a special tool is used to crack the sphere, resulting in one cocktail "bleeding" into the other cocktail. In other words, welcome to the future.

"Obviously it's the name of a movie, and the idea was to create a cocktail within a cocktail," says co-creator of the drink Robyn Gray. "It's a contemporary twist of a Negroni and I've always worked with the idea of making an interesting cocktail with something that was hidden and could be revealed. It took at least 24 times to get it right and even now I'm still trying to get it absolutely perfect. The hardest thing is getting the perfect freeze temperature."

Inception Negroni

40 ml Brokers Gin

20 ml Suze

20 ml Martini Bianco

20 ml Sweet Vermouth

20 ml Campari

Lemon

Method

Put the ice spheres in the freezer for 3.5 hours at -6 degrees

Drill them out with a drill dripped in hot water and empty the water inside the sphere

Add the pre-chilled Negroni in a 2:1:1 fashion (40 ml Brokers gin, 20 ml Campari and 20 ml Sweet Vermouth)

Cap the spheres and return them to the freezer for 30 minutes – 1 hour until they are frozen

Make a white Negroni in a 1:1:1 fashion (20 ml Suze, 20 ml Martini Bianco and 20 ml Brokers)

Garnish with a lemon twist

This week's Toast of the Town comes from Prohibition at The Rosewood Hotel Georgia in Vancouver. Read on for details about the Inception Negroni.