Name: Boulevardier No. 2
Total time: 3 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 30 ml Rouge aromatised wine; 30 ml Rouge quinquina; 15 ml Red bitter liqueur; 15 ml Cognac (brandy)

Boulevardier No. 2
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Serve in a Coupe glass

Ingredients:
1 oz	Dubonnet/French rouge aromatised wine chilled
1 oz	Rouge quinquina/kina aromatised wine chilled
¹⁄₂ oz	Strucchi Red Bitter (Campari-style liqueur)
¹⁄₂ oz	Rémy Martin V.S.O.P. cognac

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

Prepare:

Select and pre-chill a COUPE GLASS.
Prepare garnish of lemon zest twist.

How to make:

STIR all ingredients with ice.
STRAIN into chilled glass.

Garnish:

EXPRESS lemon zest twist over the cocktail and use as garnish.

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

More cocktails with similar strength and taste profile

Review:

Delicately bittersweet with wine red wine notes and herbal complexity. (For the rouge quinquina, I used Raphaël, as per the original recipe.)

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History:

Not to be confused with the better-known bourbon-based, Negroni-like Boulevardier, which appeared a couple of years earlier, in 1927, and has endured over the years to appear regularly on bar menus to this day.

The recipe for this second and quite different Boulevardier first appeared in the anonymously written 1929 book Cocktails de Paris Présentés Par RIP, where it says it was created by Robert du "Viel" (Robert Carne from Bar Viel in Hotel de Paris), winner of the "Grand Prix at the Bartenders' Championship held in Paris on February 2, 1929."

Anonymous, Cocktails de Paris Présentés Par RIP, 1929

What I call the Boulevardier No. 2 also features in William T. Boothby's 1934 The World's Drinks And How To Mix Them.

BOULEVARDIER
Dubonnet . . . . . . 1/3 jigger
Raphael . . . . . . . . 1/3 jigger
Campari . . . . . . . 1/6 jigger
Cognac . . . . . . . . . 1/6 jigger
Shake well with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass and serve.
William T. Boothby, The World's Drinks And How To Mix Them, 1934

Many thanks to fellow Discerning Drinker, Tuber Magnatum, for bringing this cocktail to our attention.

Alcohol content:

1.1 standard drinks
16.88% alc./vol. (16.88° proof)
15.2 grams of pure alcohol

More Aperitivo/aperitif cocktails
More Bittersweet (e.g. Negroni) cocktails
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Difford’s Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.

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Werd Bmocsil

6th September at 16:11

Out here in the frontier colonies (New York), quinquina is nearly unknown. Would Violet Freres Byrrh Grand Quinquina be a reasonable substitution?

Simon Difford

6th September at 16:52

I've just made with Byrrh Grand Quinquina and slightly fruitier but very tasty. I'm going to have to order a bunch of rouge quinquina to try all side by side.

Chris Brislawn

6th September at 02:44

Another exercise in substitutions. Substituting Lillet Rouge for Dubonnet was easy enough, but I was initially stumped by the St. Raphael, which I've never seen. Decided to go with Tempus Fugit Kina L'Aero d'Or and therefore replaced the Campari with Tempus Fugit Gran Classico Bitter. A great drink that actually tastes like a Negroni/Boulevardier variation despite having only a red bitter in common. So why isn't it named something more fitting like, say, the "Boulevardier `a Carne"?