Now THIS should be the cocktail of the year

Today I'll show you how to make the Night Nurse, a tropical Negroni that might be the best drink you have all year long. This drink was created by Robbie Dow at Bespoke in Wilmington, North Carolina and this Negroni Riff uses a couple of rums, a banana liqueur, coffee liqueur as well. Instead of using just Campari and a vermouth as our bittering agents for this, we're using Campari, Punta Mez, and Chinar. So there is much going on here and we'll be stirring this one, so let's get going. I'm going to start with one teaspoon of a coffee liqueur, one teaspoon of a banana liqueur, one ounce of Punta Mez, quarter ounce of Chinar, three quarter ounces of Campari, half an ounce of an overproof Jamaican rum, and then one ounce of an aged Jamaican rum. I'll express an orange peel over the top of this and then we will garnish with an extra large orange twist. So there you go, the Night Nurse. I thought it'd be fun to mix it up and just move the camera for each ingredient on this drink. I didn't really understand how many ingredients were in this Negroni Riff. It took me forever to make this. But the aroma that was coming out of that mixing glass, competing aromas from the Chinar, the Punta Mez, the Campari, the rum. For the rum in this one, I chose to use the Worthy Park Overproof. I'll talk more about that in a minute, why I chose that instead of just Ray and Nephew, but let's try it. Cheers. Find it difficult for me to be impressed by Negroni Riffs because they are abundant. This is excellent. This is fantastic. And there are so many different flavors and even the small ones you can pick up. The banana, to me, I got to sit with that longer to see if I can find it. But the coffee, coffee comes through. Teaspoon, coffee comes through. Punta Mez is not like your typical Vermouth. It's kind of like a Vermouth meets an Amaro, like a Vermouth meets the bitterness. Not the bitterness of Campari, but essentially taking a bitter Amaro and a Vermouth would be the best way to describe it. I'm not telling you to make your own that way. I'm just explaining to you how it is going to be different if you don't use Punta Mez. I appreciate having a Negroni that doesn't just simply taste like Campari, even though I like Campari as much as anybody else, but it doesn't just feel like Campari. For the rums here, one of my favorite rums, my favorite rum, Appleton 12. It's an aged rum. It did call for an aged rum. I think it might've called for Appleton 12. And for the Overproof this came up recently, which I don't have access to this, that, or the other. There are several Jamaican Overproofs that are widely, maybe widely available to where you are, but the most notable obviously is Ray and Nephew, then Rumfire, then the newer edition the last couple of years, Worthy Park, and then Money Musk has one as well. There's also one that's exclusive to Total Wine. I've had a bottle of it for a little while now. I haven't even opened it, but any of those will work. My buddy Arminder at The Rum Revival and I did a video on Overproof Jamaican rums. You should check that out. And what I found is that in a cocktail, they all kind of work the same, but that there are differences between them. I find Rumfire and Ray and Nephew to be basically identical. I know Rumfire lovers are going to be upset with that, but in a cocktail, I find them to be interchangeable almost exactly, but I prefer the Worthy Park Overproof. It just has a, it's like a touch milder and it has a nice banana note to it. And that's why I wanted to use it in this to maybe highlight that banana note coming from the banana liqueur even more. This has the exact amount of herbal and bitterness that I like where it's something you can take your sweet, sweet time with, but also you can like crush this, whether it's the deepest part of winter or the hottest day of the summer because bitter works so well in the heat. So any time of year, even though for me, these cocktails come out more when it is colder, but any time of year, this is going to work. Why this is not the cocktail of 2026? I don't know. It should be. I don't know how many of you have this or seen this, but if you haven't, you should make the Night Nurse because it is, it's delicious. It's spectacular. It evolves over time. Uh, just like the right amount of sweetness, the right amount of spirit, the right amount of bitterness, the right amount of everything. And all those notes coming through from each different ingredient, which you don't often find in, in a cocktail like this. It has, let's say six, seven, seven ingredients. I just, did I just say that? Seven ingredients, seven. So there you go, folks, the cocktail of the year, the Night Nurse and Negroni Riff. That is delicious and has rum, which is why I love it. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like below, consider subscribing to the channel. And Hey, if you want to support this channel more, go check out my Patreon page. Otherwise, till the next one.