‘The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.’ ~ Orson Wells.

This was one of the earliest reports of the new drink Negroni by this famous director, actor and screenwriter.

For me cocktails are joyous – no hard and fast rules and always being reinvented.

A classic Negroni is equal parts Campari, sweet vermouth and gin and is garnished with a lemon slice. A Negroni Sbagliato is made with prosecco instead of gin and garnished with an orange slice. The story goes that the drink was invented by accident when a bartender in Milan was making a Negroni and mistakenly grabbed a bottle of prosecco, rather than gin. In fact, ‘sbagliato’ translates to ‘mistake’ or ‘wrong’ in Italian. But there’s definitely nothing wrong with this incredibly drinkable cocktail.

Other versions of a Negroni are a Tegroni that uses tequila in place of the gin, a Queen's Negroni replaces the Campari with Pimms and a Winter Negroni uses a spiced gin and adds burnt orange.

I just happen to have a few bottles of sloe gin of varying ages collected during my wanderings around the Chiltern Hills. Sloes are just divine berries and easily found glistening on blackthorn bushes in the hedgerows. They are found in abundance along England's oldest road, The Ridgeway which is a delightful pre-historic trail stretching 87 miles.

So my riff on a Negroni is to swap half the gin for sloe gin and replace the Campari with its cousin, Aperol and add ice and a slice.