When it comes to people, I have always had a soft spot for self-deprecators. I only recently realized that this extended to cocktails as well. I met one with effacement in its very appellation. And I’ve been trying to boost its confidence by telling it how wonderful it is ever since.

The introduction was made by Joe Campanale, one of the principal owners of the restaurants dell’Anima and L’Artusi and the (apostrophe-deprived) wine bar Anfora, all in the West Village. And now that I think about it, I have to wonder if in some corner of his mind he was doing product placement, with an oracle’s vision of how this would all pan out. I’ll never know.

He was in a small group of people with whom I was drinking one night about two months ago, and he ordered a Negroni Sbagliato. That caught my attention. Although I knew what a Negroni was — gin, sweet vermouth and Campari, usually with an orange peel garnish — I’d never heard of this variation, and I was tickled by the name. Translated from Italian, it means a bungled Negroni. A Negroni in error. A mistake.

Something so self-professedly wrong just had to be right. And of course it was. As Mr. Campanale explained to me, and as a sip of the drink confirmed, it replaces the gin in a usual Negroni with a dry sparkling wine, and that changes everything, the way recasting a part meant for Kristin Scott Thomas with Kristen Wiig would. Things get less serious. Zingier. Bubblier.