French · Cocktail
Boulevardier
Take a Negroni and swap the gin for bourbon. That's a Boulevardier, and it's what you drink from October onwards when gin starts feeling too cold.
Photo: Vivita Malite / Pexels
Ingredients
- 1.5 oz Maker's Mark bourbon
- 1 oz Campari
- 1 oz Gallo sweet vermouth
- Orange peel, to garnish
Method
- Put the bourbon, Campari and vermouth into a mixing glass with plenty of ice.
- Stir for thirty seconds. The outside of the glass should be too cold to hold comfortably.
- Strain over one large cube in a rocks glass.
- Squeeze a strip of orange peel over the surface so the oil lands on the drink, then drop it in.
The one thing that matters
Stir it, never shake. All three ingredients are spirits and shaking turns it cloudy and thin. Thirty seconds over plenty of ice.
About this drink
Equal parts is the classic build: one ounce each of bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth. Most bartenders now push the bourbon up to an ounce and a half, because whiskey is heavier than gin and one-to-one-to-one lets the Campari run away with it. Try both and settle the argument yourself.
The bourbon changes it more than you'd expect. Where a Negroni is sharp and botanical, this is round, warm and slightly sweet underneath the bitterness. Maker's Mark is wheated, which pushes it further that way.
It was invented in Paris in the 1920s by an American writer who ran a magazine called The Boulevardier, which is a word for a man who spends a great deal of time walking around town with nothing much to do.
Same warning as the Negroni: vermouth is wine and it goes off. Keep it in the fridge once open, and toss it after a month. Stale vermouth is the reason most homemade versions of this taste dusty.
Serve over one big cube with an orange peel squeezed over the top. It's an aperitivo by design, so put it before dinner with something salty, or after dinner instead of dessert.
