White Negroni

Gin, Suze, and Lillet Blanc — Wayne Collins' 2001 Negroni variation with Suze's pale gentian replacing Campari's orange, the equal-parts structure preserved.

The White Negroni was created by British bartender Wayne Collins at VinExpo in Bordeaux, France in 2001, working alongside Nick Blacknell, then the Plymouth Gin brand director. Collins was challenged to create a Negroni-style drink using French ingredients available at the wine trade fair, and he built a preparation substituting Suze — the French aperitif liqueur produced from gentian root since 1889 by the Maison Pernod, now owned by the William Grant & Sons group — for Campari, and Lillet Blanc for sweet vermouth, retaining Plymouth Gin as the base. The result preserved the Negroni's essential equal-parts bitter-herbal-spirit structure while producing a completely different color (pale gold rather than deep orange-red) and a different flavor (the gentian's earthy, floral bitterness replacing Campari's citrus bite, and Lillet's wine-and-quinine delicacy replacing Italian sweet vermouth's spiced richness). Simon Ford subsequently introduced the drink to Audrey Saunders at the Pegu Club in New York, where it appeared on the menu and reached a wider audience. The White Negroni is now recognized as one of the most successful Negroni variations in the canon, regularly listed among the contemporary drinks that most faithfully honor the original's structure while producing genuinely distinct results.