Boulevardier About & Recipe

Consider the Negroni: made with gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth. The Negroni is a cocktail at once sharp and smooth, lean and lush, brusquely bitter and slightly sweet. A cocktail, in other words, with the kind of bright, clean character perfectly suited for a summer day, but robust enough to hold its own at any time of the year.

This isn't a Negroni. It is, however, the Negroni's long-lost autumnal cousin. First noted in print in 1927 in a slender volume called Barflies and Cocktails, and forgotten almost ever since, the Boulevardier takes the same Negroni formula--a good dose of gin brushed up with equal parts Campari and sweet vermouth--and gives it a twist by substituting whiskey for the gin.

Ingredients

• 1 ounce bourbon or rye whiskey
• 1 ounce Campari
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• Garnish: orange twist or cherry

• Directions

  1. 1.
     Pour ingredients into a mixing glass and fill with cracked ice. Stir well for 20 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry or a twist of orange peel.

Note: As with the Negroni, the Boulevardier is flexible; contemporary palates may appreciate bumping up the whiskey to 1 1/2 ounces and dropping the other ingredients to 3/4 ounce. Try it both ways and see what you prefer.