Boulevardier

Say, “Bonjour” to the Boulevardier – the bourbon cocktail with Parisian roots. 

In the 1920s, Paris was the hot place to be for Americans. And why not? With a crumbled, post-war economy, increased media censorship, and (let us not forget) Prohibition, the U.S. was a lot less appealing than the City of Love. Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Aaron Copland, Henry Miller and many other artists came to Paris for inspiration and, well, a good time. This boozy, expat, Paris playground is where the Boulevardier was born. 

The credit for the Boulevardier begins with Erskine Gwynne, a publisher for a popular magazine aimed at expats in Paris called – you guessed it – “Boulevardier.” At least that’s how the story goes according to Harry MacElhone’s 1927 book, “Barflies and Cocktails.” Gwynne was a regular at MacElhone’s bar (which was aptly named Harry’s) in Paris and he cites her as the inspiration. The two certainly succeeded at making a cocktail that both expats and Parisians loved, but in reality, the Boulevardier is just a bourbon variation on the Negroni. 

The Negroni was invented only a decade or so earlier in Florence by Count Camillo Negroni. He was humble enough to name it after himself after demanding that his favorite drink, the Americano, be made with gin instead of soda water. So really, the Boulevardier is a riff on a Negroni which is a riff on an Americano. Easy. The Boulevardier was so liked that it even inspired a few new variations of its own including the rye-based Old Pal and the modern Embarcadero.

At the end of the day, the Boulevardier is just three ingredients blended together over ice: Bourbon, Campari, and sweet vermouth. The trick with simple, balanced cocktails like this is that ingredients really matter. You and your drinking partners will certainly notice if you use bottom shelf bourbon in a drink like this, so treat yourself. Plus the simple but elegant way of getting very intoxicated feels very 1920s Paris, oui?