The Boulevardier is the cocktail of 2018

By Josh Sims

If 2017 was the year of the Negroni – in cocktail terms, anyway – then this year will belong to its first cousin, the Boulevardier, which mixes Campari and vermouth rosso with bourbon instead of the Negroni’s gin.

The Negroni, which turns 100 next year, owes its creation (perhaps apocryphally) to an Italian count, Camillo Negroni, who asked a bartender in Florence to stiffen his Americano with a slosh of gin. For a while it was the drink of choice for Riviera sophisticates who enjoyed its bougainvillea-pink colour as much as its metallic taste. In time, however, drinkers’ palates turned back towards both the sweet and the sour and the Negroni slipped down the cocktail charts.