Cocktail · Spirit-forward
Boulevardier
A Negroni that traded gin for bourbon and put on a winter coat.
How to order it: Slightly bourbon-heavy beats equal parts. Orange twist, big cube, low lighting.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 1¼ oz bourbon
- 1 oz Campari
- 1 oz sweet vermouth
- Stir; big cube or coupe
- Orange twist
The story
Paris between the wars, lousy with American money and American thirst. Erskine Gwynne — a Vanderbilt-connected expatriate who edited a magazine called The Boulevardier — gets the credit, and Harry MacElhone of Harry's New York Bar put the drink and the attribution in print in 1927's Barflies and Cocktails: the Negroni's formula with bourbon standing in for gin. Then it vanished for the better part of eighty years, a footnote until the 2000s whiskey and amaro revivals rediscovered it and made it autumn's answer to the Negroni's endless summer. The Boulevardier endures because the swap is transformative, not cosmetic — vanilla and oak turning bitterness into something closer to candlelight.
Classic variation
The Boulevardier is a riff on a classic. Meet the original:
Adjacent pours