Boulevardier Cocktail

Place the glass in the freezer. Fill the mixing glass up to 3/4 of its capacity with ice. With the help of a bar spoon, swirl the ice to make the glass walls of the container cool down faster.

Measure with the jigger and pour 1 1/2 OZ (45 ml) of bourbon into the mixing glass.

Measure with the jigger and pour 1 OZ (30 ml) of bitter Campari into the mixing glass.

Measure with the jigger and pour 1 OZ (30 ml) red vermouth into the mixing glass.

Emulsify the ingredients by spinning the bar spoon along the mixing glass wall.

Remove the cup from the freezer.

Using the strainer, pour the cocktail into the cooled cup.

With a citrus peeler remove a tongue of orange peel. Flavour with the essential oils of the citrus fruit by squeezing the zest and placing it on top of the glass.

With fruit tweezers, garnish the cocktail with lemon zest. Now it's ready to be served.

History

The boulevardier was born in 1927, as a variant of the Negroni. In place of gin we find bourbon, the other two ingredients remain identical to the famous cocktail of the Count.

The cocktail was born in the Prohibition period, when the great barman Harry McElhone mixed the three ingredients for Erskine Gwynne, an American expatriate writer, creator and editor of a well-known Parisian magazine of those years: La Boulevardier.

The drink also appears in the pages of the book Barflies and Cocktails written by McElhone himself and published in 1927. In the text we find some pages dedicated to the magazine of his friend Erskine, including one in which the word boulevardier formed an acronym with the names of distillates, beverages and spirits of the time.

Variants

The boulevardier is already the variant of another cocktail, the Negroni. So we can consider the Negroni and all its alternatives, such as the wrong or the American, variants of the boulevardier.

Curiosity

The name was chosen because in French, 'boulevard', means biting and sharp, but it also has an adjective meaning that indicates a 'street' person, but in the good sense of the term, a 'bon vivant', the classic dandy of the Belle Epoque, a profile that fitted Erskine Gwynne perfectly.