Guest Column- Brett Bauer
Earlier this century I sold gin, a lot of gin. The cocktail revival movement was in full swing and there were many menus full of incredibly intriguing, yet complicated options. Often, I’d sit down on a bar stool and simply request my favorite cocktail to make at home, due to its ease, a Negroni. In doing so, I gained instant credibility with the bartender and his team, with them often asking me how I was involved in our wonderful, dynamic industry. Many times, I'd have to remind them that I ordered a cocktail as we began to wind ourselves down the conversational journey that a bartender and his patron are known to have. You see, for years ordering a Negroni truly did serve as a “secret handshake”, which Bon Appetit later went on to share with the masses. As the years went on, it seemed every bar offered their own version of a Negroni: barrel-aged, unequal parts, and of course, a frozen variety. Negroni Week, while a charitable endeavor, grew to become a major marketing campaign and my insider access was no more.
Good for the Negroni. However, I moved on to bigger, better, and browner things…whiskey! I truly enjoy a well-made Manhattan or Old Fashioned and most of all, a nice, long pour of Sagamore Spirit over one big 'ol ice sphere. Though every once in a while, I’d find myself missing the bitterness and digestif delights of my one favorite cocktail that often brought me instant credibility. Thankfully, just a few recipes into my version of “Vintage Spirit and Forgotten Cocktails", I stumbled into The Boulevardier! I’ve never looked back!
According to Dictionary.com, the word boulevardier defines a person who frequents the most fashionable Parisian locales or a bon vivant. The Boulevardier cocktail actually found its way to print twenty years before the Negroni ever did with it first appearing in Harry McElhone's, of the famous Harry's New York Bar in Paris, ABCs of Mixing Cocktails in 1922 and again in his 1927 book, Barflies and Cocktails. It was named after Erskine Gwynne, a nephew of Alfred Vanderbilt (not the one of Sagamore Farm fame) and editor of a magazine that was sort of a Parisian riff on the New Yorker called The Boulevardier. According to Toby Cecchini of the New York Times, "Erskine Gwynne was a wealthy young American lad who flitted off to Paris to start a literary magazine in 1927, something along the lines of The Dial, The Transatlantic Review and other English language pamphlets that reaped a bountiful harvest by giving an early forum to writers like Hemingway, Joyce, Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Coward, Thomas Wolfe and others".
Harry's version called for the extremely soft Canadian Club, whereas my version calls for the sweet, yet bolder Sagamore Spirit Cask Strength, a Maryland style rye.
Buy a great vermouth (I LOVE Carpano Antica), decide between Campari or Aperol, and grab your hopefully nearly empty bottle of Sagamore Spirit Cask Strength or Signature Rye. For your first, I recommend you start with equal portions and serve over a pile of ice cubes. As you fall in love with the bitter, spirit forward joy that is The Boulevardier, take that passion and use it to find YOUR own version.
I call mine Brett's Bold Boulevardier or The Triple B:
1.25 ounces Sagamore Spirit Cask Strength
1 ounce Aperol
1 ounce Carpano Antica
Shake with ice and serve up in a martini glass. It is also great over an ice sphere.
If you switch out the sweet vermouth for a dry vermouth, you’ll find yourself with The Old Pal, which appeared alongside The Boulevardier in McElhone's books. But, more on that later...
Cheers!
Sources:
http://imbibemagazine.com/the-history-of-the-boulevardier-cocktail/
https://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/case-study-the-boulevardier/
Cheers!
Brett R. Bauer