“The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”

One of the earliest English-language reports of the Negroni comes from none other than Orson Welles. In 1947, while in Rome filming Black Magic, Welles was introduced to the drink and immediately appreciated its peculiar balance. Asked about this “new drink,” he quipped:

“The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”

The remark was first published in the Coshocton Tribune of Ohio in December 1947. Welles, larger than life both on and off the screen, gave the Negroni exactly the kind of dramatic, witty endorsement it deserved. Though the cocktail had been around in Italy since the 1910s, Welles’s words helped mark its first steps onto the international stage.