Boulevardier

The boulevardier is an alcoholic cocktail made with whiskey, sweet vermouth and Campari. It began as an obscure drink in 1920s Paris and, after decades of neglect, became a popular variant of the negroni in the 2010s.

History

The boulevardier first appeared in print in the Parisian cocktail book Barflies and Cocktails, published in 1927. The drink is credited to Erskine Gwynne, an American-born writer who founded a monthly Paris magazine called Boulevardier, which ran from 1927 to 1932. The recipe does not appear among the main recipes but in Arthur Moss's essay "Cocktails About Town", which profiles cocktails favoured by men about town. In that original version, the three ingredients were in equal parts: Campari, Italian vermouth and bourbon.

The cocktail did not catch on. No references to it have been found in cocktail books between 1927 and 2007. Its near twin, the Old pal, did make it into later editions of the main recipe lists and was among the 50 cocktails in the inaugural 1961 IBA list. The drink was rediscovered by Ted Haigh, who wrote about it in 2007 in Imbibe magazine under the name "Dr. Cocktail". Paul Clarke later spread it through recipes published on Serious Eats. It was still rare in the early 2010s but had become popular by the mid-2010s. The IBA added it to its official list in 2020, in the "Unforgettables" section.

Culture

The boulevardier belongs to the revival of craft cocktails, a movement that recovers historical recipes and studies them in books and specialist publications. It is served straight up, without ice, in a stemmed glass, and garnished with an orange twist. The most common proportions, those of the IBA, use more spirit than the other components (3:2:2), and many modern recipes push the whiskey even further. Compared with the negroni, which uses gin, the boulevardier swaps the base for bourbon or rye whiskey, giving a warmer and less botanical character. Today it appears in cocktail bars around the world as an alternative to the negroni.

Trivia