The Boulevardier

Swap the gin in a Negroni for bourbon and you get a darker, rounder, more serious drink with a better claim to the cooler months. The Boulevardier has been around since 1927, and the argument over how to make it is mostly an argument about sugar.

INTRODUCTION

The Boulevardier first appears in print in 1927, and not where you would think to look. It is not in the main recipe list of Harry MacElhone's Barflies and Cocktails, the Paris bar book of its day. It turns up in a back essay by Arthur Moss on the drinks of the city's men-about-town, where it is credited to Erskine Gwynne, an American writer and socialite who edited a Paris monthly named, with some confidence, The Boulevardier. MacElhone's bar was where Gwynne drank; MacElhone recorded the drink rather than invented it, a distinction that gets lost more often than it should. The word itself is French for a well-off man about town, which tells you most of what you need to know about the intended drinker.

The recipe as printed was short: Campari, Italian vermouth and bourbon, in equal thirds. That detail settles two arguments before they begin. The original was a bourbon drink, so rye is a later preference rather than a purist's correction. And it was equal parts, so every ratio you meet today is somebody's deliberate attempt to improve on a single line from 1927. If the Whisky Sour is the playful face of American whiskey in the glass, this is its after-dinner side: bitter, sweet and warming, built for the evenings drawing in.

METHODOLOGY

1. Put the rocks glass in the freezer for ten minutes if you can. A cold glass keeps the single large cube from melting too quickly.

2. Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full with ice. Add the bourbon, the Campari and the vermouth.

3. Stir for about 25 seconds. This is a heavier, whiskey-led drink than a Negroni, and it benefits from a little more dilution to open it up. Stir until the outside of the glass is properly cold and the drink looks silky rather than choppy.

4. Strain over the large cube. If serving up, strain into the chilled coupe and skip the ice.

5. Take a wide strip of orange peel and twist it over the surface, skin side facing the drink, so the oils land on top. Run the peel once around the rim and either drop it in or rest it on the edge.

6. Serve straight away. Unlike its gin cousin, the Boulevardier is a drink that rewards slowing down, so there is no hurry to drink it, only to make it.