How to Make a Rye Whiskey Cocktail With Campari

The Old Pal is like a Negroni, but meaner. Spicier. More austere. It is an acquired taste—one worth acquiring, we insist, but an acquired taste nonetheless—and you can think of it as the last stop on the Negroni train. If you don’t enjoy Campari and the Negroni feels like a chore, the Old Pal will feel like that same chore just with somebody punching you in the face while you do it. 

Now, if you’re still reading this we’ll take that to mean you are at least curious about what the Old Pal has to offer, which is great. Not all drinks are here to complement your outfit and kiss you softly on the cheek. In the Old Pal, the plush fruit of the sweet vermouth from a Negroni (or Boulevardier) is replaced with the herbal whisperings of dry vermouth, and the crystalline purity of gin is replaced with the spicy and assertive rye whiskey, leaving you with a cocktail that is highly complex, nuanced, bracing, bitter, and indisputably adult. While some cocktails feel like a free meal, drinking an Old Pal feels like the first time you took your parents to dinner and you picked up the check. It feels like growing up, which is a different kind of thrill. 

In 1927, a bartender living in Paris named Harry MacElhone wrote a cocktail book called Barflies and Cocktails with the help of his friend, Arthur Moss. They were famous, in their worlds: MacElhone was as well-known as a bartender can get, and Moss wrote the “Around the Town” column in a local English language newspaper called The New York Herald, Paris. The first two-thirds of Barflies and Cocktails is a standard cocktail book with lists of MacElhone’s recipes, and then it breaks for a small essay by Arthur Moss, a narrative litany similar to his famous column, listing three dozen “men about town” and the recipes for the cocktails they like to drink.

Here, we meet the Old Pal. Moss writes: 

“I remember way back in 1878, on the 30th of February to be exact, when [I] was discussing this subject with my old pal ‘Sparrow’ Robinson and he said to yours truly, ‘get away with that stuff, my old pal, here’s the drink I invented… 1/3 Canadian Club, 1/3 Eyetalian vermouth, and 1/3 Campari,’ and told [me] that he would dedicate this cocktail to me and call it, My Old Pal.”

This is quoted at length to highlight just how useless of a so-called history it is. Where to start? That there of course is no 30th of February? That Arthur Moss wasn’t even born until 1889? The spelling of “eyetalian,” or that it means sweet vermouth, when all other contemporary recipes call for dry vermouth? All of this is obvious horseshit, a joke, perhaps amusing in 1927, but in any case, it doesn’t give us much to go on. 

Here’s what we know: “Sparrow” Robinson was a beloved fellow columnist for The New York Herald, Paris. He was a character, a diminutive 5’1”, born in Scotland, lived in America, and almost universally known in Paris, where he finished the last 20 odd years of his life. He referred to everyone he’d ever met as “Old Pal,” and was so famous for doing so that the habit is mentioned repeatedly in his obituaries. He was a creature of the same bars and cafes that MacElhone, Moss, and their like were in, and clearly, this cocktail was created and named either by or for him. 

Here’s something else we know: Three years later, MacElhone published a more serious book, a 1930 reprinting of his ABC of Mixing Cocktails, which doesn’t have the Negroni or the Boulevardier, but does include the Old Pal. Similarly, the even-more-famous Harry Craddock of the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London publishes the Savoy Cocktail Book that same year—easily the most influential cocktail book of his generation, probably of the whole century—and his volume includes just one cocktail with Campari: The Old Pal.

The history is a labyrinth and people argue about it, but it seems clear to me that while the Old Pal may or may not have been the first Campari cocktail to spread across the Anglosphere, there was certainly a time when it was the most popular. It makes sense, in a way; made correctly, the Old Pal has much more in common with a Campari-tinged Manhattan than a rye whiskey Negroni. It’s simultaneously bold and subtle, spirituous and delicate, leveraging rye whiskey and dry vermouth’s fondness for each other (see the Brooklyn or “Perfect” Manhattan for more examples of this) and taking Campari’s bitter orange along for the ride. It is delicious and well worth making, and an essential classic cocktail in the proud stable of Negroni cousins. 

What it’s not is a cocktail that will tell you that your hair looks amazing if it doesn’t. We all have to grow up sometime.

Old Pal

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain up into a coupe, express the oils from a lemon peel over the top, and garnish with the peel.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Ratios: As mentioned, it really helps to think of this as a rye cocktail with a couple other things, as opposed to an equal parts Negroni-like drink. Equal parts builds just fail to come together across any style of rye, and for me personally, they merely remind me of things I’d rather drink.

The above is what you’ll find from both Death & Co.’s Cocktail Codex and Attaboy’s “Bartender’s Choice” app, and I agree that it is most right most of the time. That said, with some rye whiskeys (like Wild Turkey 101 and Bulleit Rye), the better ratio is 1.5 oz. rye to 1 oz. each of dry vermouth and Campari. I do not understand why this is, but it is so. If the recipe above isn’t coming together for you, try adding a quarter ounce each more of Campari and dry vermouth and see where it takes you.

Rye: The above ratios were best with Rittenhouse, Michter’s, and Old Elk ryes. Of the options, I thought Rittenhouse made the most classically delicious cocktail, though Michter’s teased out a lovely coffee note from the experience, and Old Elk was great too, chocolatey and round. In fact, all the ryes were pretty great, just some required a slightly tweaked ratio. Your mileage may vary but try it with whatever you’ve got.

Dry Vermouth: I wouldn’t go leaner than Dolin Dry, the classic from France and my go-to dry vermouth for nearly everything. That said, if you’ve been casting come-hither glances at that craft bottle of dry vermouth that has a bolder take (like Mancino Secco or Yzaguirre Dry Reserve), I’d say now is the time to use it. These bones need all the flesh they can get.