DrinkWire is Liquor.com’s showcase for the best articles, recipes and reviews from the web’s top writers and bloggers. In this post, the Gastronom offers a spooky cocktail recipe.

Being folks that write about cocktails, we love the time around Halloween because not only does it mean fall has arrived with all its fun flavors, but it also is a great excuse to get to make up fun cocktails for Halloween parties with all kinds of crazy names and play with ingredients like dry ice! For our Vampire's Negroni, we took a traditional cocktail (the Negroni) and put a little twist on it and then finished it with a little Halloween flair!

We love to use the Negroni as a base cocktail to riff off of as the recipe lends itself to simple variations of the basic formula of equal parts of gin, Campari and vermouth. A simple tweak of one of those ingredients and you have an entirely new cocktail that still has the satisfyingly bitter characteristic of the Negroni, but with an entirely new flavor!

We started out making the Vampire's Negroni by mixing up our ingredients. We swapped out the typical London Dry gin, opting instead for St. George Distilling's Dry Rye Reposado Gin. The Dry Rye Reposado Gin is aged in barrels (rather appropriate for a drink that uses Vampire in the name) and brings the spicy warmth of a rye whiskey with the crisp herbal notes of a gin. The gin gives the strong foundation needed for the other bold flavors we are going to use in the Vampire's Negroni.

Next we wanted to bring a little sweetness to the party, and in a Negroni vermouth is normally where you turn. For this cocktail, we skipped the vermouth and went with Cynar instead, using the Italian digestivo to bring a sweet earthiness to the cocktail, while also adding a hint of midnight color to the cocktail.

For the last ingredient, we didn't stray to far afield, turning to strawberry infused Campari to bring the bitter note we all expect when we get a drink called a Negroni. The strawberry infusion also adds a hint of berry that plays well with gin while also brightening up the red color of the Campari. Adding a bit of red to a cocktail named the Vampire's Negroni seemed appropriate as well!

We garnished the Vampire's Negroni with a smoking sprig of rosemary that gives a nice toasted evergreen hint to the cocktail while looking cool!

We did mention that we finished the Vampire's Negroni with a little Halloween flair, and when we started thinking about how so many vampires in movies always are shrouded in fog it seemed like a good idea to bring a little fog to this cocktail. How do you make fog in a cocktail you say? Making a cocktail roll with fog or "smoke" is really easy with a little dry ice! Just drop a small chip into the glass just before serving and the drink will bubble and produce a nice white fog!

One note about using dry ice in a cocktail, always make sure you use the smallest amount needed to get the fog going and let the drinker know that the drink should not be consumed until the dry ice has completely evaporated (and the drink stops bubbling!)

Give the Vampire's Negroni a try for your next Halloween party, you might just find it super spooky! Cheers!

The Vampire's Negroni

Ingredients:

• 1 oz St. George Distilling Dry Rye Reposado Gin
• 1 oz Cynar
• 1 oz Strawberry Infused Campari
• Rosemary for Garnish
• Dry Ice (optional)

Instructions

• Combine liquors in a shaker with ice.
• Shake until chilled.
• Strain into a coupe glass.
• Garnish with a torched rosemary sprig
• Drop in a small chip of dry Ice for fog

Cheers!