I’m puzzled that the Boulevardier cocktail hasn’t found wider fame in the current fast-moving mixology environment, where old and storied is as revered as bitter and brown. Ask most mustached bar wags what their favorite cocktail is and a strong percentage would cite either the Negroni or the Manhattan. No surprise there; these are bedrock classics that, even done haphazardly, are tastier than most everything else going. Ask those same self-anointed experts to make you a Boulevardier and a strong percentage might be left scratching their heads. I can’t fathom why; the Boulevardier is a marvel of a cocktail with an enviably colorful peerage, and it’s effectively the bastard child of those two other cocktails I mentioned. In these colder months, it’s a magnificent drink to have as a fallback when you want something richer and more complex than just a whiskey but can never seem to think of what else to order.
Considering this drink in the abstract is like looking at one of those M.C. Escher prints: it’s a flock of snowy geese migrating or, depending on how you squint, a phalanx of black crows. It’s composed of two parts American whiskey (rye or bourbon work equally well), with one part each of sweet vermouth and Campari, the famed bright red Italian bitter that smacks so forcefully of grapefruit peel. Taken one way, it’s a Manhattan with a portion of Campari swapped in for the regular few drops of Angostura or other aromatic bitters. Seen the other way, it’s a Negroni with whiskey in place of the gin.
The drink is credited to Harry McElhone, the founder and proprietor of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, and dated to 1927. It is mentioned only glancingly in his book “Barflies and Cocktails,” not in the 300-odd cocktail recipes that make up the bulk of that volume, but rather in a tongue-in-cheek epilogue that follows, recounting the antics of his regular customers. In a brief paragraph, he cites: “Now is the time for all good barflies to come to the aid of the party, since Erskinne Gwynne crashed in with his Boulevardier Cocktail: 1/3 Campari, 1/3 Italian vermouth, 1/3 Bourbon whisky.” McElhone’s earlier volume, “Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails,” has the cocktail listed using Canadian Club as the whisky. Two things of interest in this exhumation: the original recipe had the ingredients at equal parts, as with the Negroni; and McElhone seems to defer to Gwynne as the actual inventor of the drink.
The origin of the name now becomes magically obvious to students of 1920s Paris. Erskine Gwynne was a wealthy young American lad who flitted off to Paris to start a literary magazine in 1927, something along the lines of The Dial, The Transatlantic Review and other English language pamphlets that reaped a bountiful harvest by giving an early forum to writers like Hemingway, Joyce, Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Noël Coward, Thomas Wolfe and others. His magazine, for which there was also a full-page ad at the back of “Barflies and Cocktails,” was called The Boulevardier.
As a bartender, I find this drink so useful because, with just the slightest tweaks, it’s transformed. It’s a great in its de facto form, but I often find Campari a bit of a bully to softer whiskies, even at the modern recipe’s half up ratio of 2 parts whiskey to 1 of Campari. By cutting the 1 part of Campari in half, or even thirds, one can swap in dozens of other amari, or what are known as potable bitters, and create new versions of the drink ad infinitum. Try half an ounce of Campari with a quarter-ounce each of Amaro Ramazzotti and Zwack Hungarian bitter, with a swath of orange zest instead of the lemon. Or try thirds each of Campari, Cynar, the artichoke-based amaro and Braulio, a wonderful old Alpine bitter with a stark, piney grab that is brand new to the American market. Playtime is limited only by your patience and your budget. Add to those factors the variance in different whiskies and vermouths and you have a simple drink that can present you with new facets forever. Nitpickers will suggest these variations are all technically different drinks, and should have their own names and sub-phyla; that’s why they’re called nitpickers. I just call it putting a little English on a Boulevardier, with a tip of the hat to Mr. Gwynne. The exception to that is if you use dry vermouth in place of the sweet, whereby it becomes an Old Pal Cocktail, pegged to the same source book and year (a very worthy, slightly drier alternative).
Some bartenders wander even farther from the original recipe. Richard Knapp, a co-owner of Mother’s Ruin in Manhattan, cuts the Campari to ¾ of an ounce, adds a barspoonful of house-made pecan orgeat syrup and a dash of orange bitters, and still has the audacity to call it a Boulevardier. All to the good; whether donning plumage or cleaving to the conservative course, that the drink is at last turning up on lists here and there is heartening. Damon Boelte, the head bartender at Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, is winging a nouvelle tilt on the Old Pal, called the New Buddy, employing bourbon, Aperol, sweet white vermouth and grapefruit bitters, while at the new American bistro Battersby on Smith Street in Brooklyn, Rachel Kim has concocted a tight menu of classic cocktails in which a by-the-book Boulevardier finds a perfect nest. Still, the drink remains a rare enough find that you’d do well to add it to your quiver. Consider the recipe below a starter map, and find your bliss by adjusting the volumes and testing out other bitters.
The Boulevardier
- 2 ounces rye or bourbon
- 1 ounces Campari
- 1 ounce sweet vermouth (I love a half and half mixture of Cinzano Rosso and Carpano Antica Formula).
Stir ingredients together in a mixing glass filled with ice, strain into either a stemmed cocktail glass or a rocks glass with ice, to preference. Garnish with a twist of lemon zest.