The SCT Negroni
Stir liquid components with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, garnish with star anise (optional).
The drink is a vivid clear red. Cinzano and Select pair well together. Carpano would also fit with the naming convention, but the body and color would be more dense. Select is somewhat less intense than Campari and has some rhubarb notes that distinguish it.
The optional garnish provides a mild anise aromatic note and some flavor near the end of the glass.
This has become one of my favorite Negroni variants.
An SCT (Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope) is a type of telescope frequently used by amateur astronomers--and the first type I used. For this drink, SCT stands for Select, Cinzano, Tanqueray. A star anise garnish completes the astronomy theme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt%E2%80%93Cassegrain_telescope
- Monkey Island — Dry vermouth, Gin, Damson gin liqueur, Khoosh Bitter
- Yellow Daisy — Gin, Dry vermouth, Orange liqueur, Absinthe, Cherry
- Vespe(a)r — Vodka, Gin, Aromatized wine, Pear eau de vie, Lemon peel
- Life's Not a Paragraph — Gin, Light rum, Dry vermouth, Falernum, Apricot liqueur, Orange peel
- Miller's Crossing — Jamaican rum, Gin, Sweet vermouth, Herbal liqueur, Bitters, Orange peel
Surprisingly peachy/pink/red--this color comes from the Fee Cranberry Bitters which are hard to dispense with their viscous glycerin solvent through a dropper orifice top, I might have gone a little heavy trying to reach ~30 drops for 3 dashes (I sometimes remove the orifice tops from Fee bitters so that I can measure drops directly with a dropper.) Maybe the color is where the bullseye name arises? The ancho heat plays well with the mild whiskey providing some lingering depth to the floral bergamot liqueur, and orange juice. The drink lacks any bitter backbone to the finish, but other than that it works.