In 10 years of bartending, Alfred Siu, the owner of Project Gigglewater, on Dundas Street West, can’t remember serving more than 10 Sbagliato in a year.
“It used to be a bartenders’ drink,” Siu said. A play on the classic Negroni with the gin substituted for Prosecco, it was a niche twist on an already acquired taste for the nerdiest of cocktail nerds.
“Sbagliato was one of the lost cousins,” said Nick Kennedy, the owner of Civil Liberties on Bloor Street West. It was something you might see at a bartending competition, or in an old recipe book, not an order you’d often here at the rail.
But for Kennedy, Siu and other bartenders in Toronto, that all changed in October. That’s when a promo clip for HBO’s “House of the Dragon” went viral on TikTok, making the Sbagliato — sweet, bitter, bubbly and previously obscure — suddenly the hottest cocktail in town.
“I would say sales have increased by about 700 per cent,” said Jonathan K. Crosson, the operations director at Toronto’s Bar Montauk. “I’ve had to stock more Prosecco. … And I’m not speaking just from my own bar. When the meme first landed, the joke among bartenders was just how many people were drinking them.”
For Toronto’s cocktail elite, the Sbagliato boom has been baffling and kind of sweet, a bit like the Sbagliato itself. It’s been the biggest pop culture drink explosion at least since Don Draper first ordered a Gibson’s Old Fashioned on “Mad Men” and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
“I watched the interview and I was like ‘Oh s–t, here we go,” Crosson said. “I thought maybe it would happen for a week (but) it’s been like (this) the last three months.”
The 20-second clip features Olivia Cooke, who plays Alicent Hightower on “House of the Dragon,” asking her colleague Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra Targaryen) about their drink of choice.
“A Negroni,” D’Arcy replies, their North London accent making the word sound more like “Nagroooneh.”
“That’s what I was going to say!” Cooke interjects before D’Arcy continued on: “Sbagliato,” they said, raising both eyebrows. “With Prosecco in it.”
“Ooo,” Cooke purred in reply. “Stunning!”
The original clip has since been viewed more than 32 million times on TikTok. Some 82,000 TikTok users, meanwhile, have repurposed the sound to make their own tribute videos, including the queer pop icon King Princess, who posted a clip of herself, mouth agape, side by side with the original video under the caption: “Why is this the hottest thing I’ve ever heard?!?!”
There’s no doubt the Sbagliato video has had special resonance in the queer community. “If you’re queer and on the internet this week, you’d be hard pressed to think of a hornier cocktail,” Mel Woods wrote in Xtra Magazine in October. But the drink’s new popularity in Toronto hasn’t been confined to any one group.
“I noticed a lot of people asking me about it, like friends who had never tried it and who aren’t in the industry who are just curious if it was a real drink, if it was a good drink, if it was something that they could order when they went out,” said Christina Veira, the co-owner of Bar Mordecai.
Evelyn Chick, the owner of Simpl Things, in Parkdale, said her bartenders have added a Sbagliato button to her point-of-sale system because customers were asking for it so much. “It’s been quite the phenomenon,” she said with a bit of a sigh. “I just find it interesting that its become such a thing because of that meme.”
The word “sbagliato” means mistaken or wrong in Italian. According to cocktail lore it was invented by a bartender named Mirko Stocchetto in Milan’s Bar Basso in 1972. In one version of the story, Stocchetto pulled the wrong bottle off the shelf while making a Negroni and decided to roll with it.
Toronto has its own history with the Sbagliato, though. Years ago, bartenders at the old Chantecler in Parkdale started referring to the act of adding bubbles to any cocktail as “spaggling,” according to Josh Lindley an ex-Chantecler bartender who helped popularize the term.
“A Negroni Sbagliato is a great drink with a storied history that is delicious,” Lindley wrote in a text message. “The results of Spaggling a drink vary widely.”
The actual term “to spaggle,” though, was coined by Lindley’s old boss, Chantecler’s owner Jacob Wharton-Shukster. Wharton-Shukster was enjoying a Negroni after judging an outdoor cocktail competition, he said, when, feeling dehydrated, he cut to the front of a line and asked the bartender to “spaggle this s–t for me.”
“Without missing a beat, he instantly understood through my slurring that I wanted bubbly wine in the drink,” Wharton-Shukster wrote in a text message. “Josh, who was with me, was incredulous, and basically just pointed at me in amazement. Thus the “Spaggle” was born.”
Before Chantecler closed following a fire in 2019, you could “spaggle” any drink at the bar for an extra $4. When the restaurant reopens next month in a new location, Wharton-Shukster said, spaggling will be on the menu again.
The actual Sbagliato, like a Negroni, can be something of an acquired taste, bartenders say.
“A lot of people ordered it (after the meme),” said Kennedy. “I would say not as many people loved it as ordered it.”
If you do want a Sbagliato on New Year’s Eve, though, you may be better off making one at home. Some of Toronto’ best cocktail bars are closed for the night this year. “At the end of the day, for the vast majority of places, it’s no busier from a sales perspective than a regular night,” Bar Mordecai’s Viera said. “And it often comes with a lot more moving parts.”
If you are making your own Sbagliatos at home, though, be warned, they come with a kick.
“I feel like you can almost just have one or two of them, and then you should be good for the night,” said Chick.
She paused for a moment. “Or not. You can have four or five of them. Whatever floats your boat.”
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be a registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free)
