The Cardinale cocktail was created by a bartender named Giovanni Raimondo at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome Italy in 1950. It was originally created in honor of a visiting cardinal who was in town to meet with Pope Pius XII during the Jubilee (a special year celebrated by the church to receive blessing and pardon from God). The combination of ingredients and effort to match the hue of the robes worn by the cardinal.

Obviously, this drink is modeled after the Negroni and belongs in the same family tree as all the other Great Negroni Riffs such as the boulevardier and the white Negroni but it is a mainly unknown riff.