When he first whipped this drink up in 1927, Harry McElhone of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris wasn’t reinventing the wheel, just the Negroni. McElhone swapped out gin for American whiskey, resulting in a more rounded and subtle sip. In Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails, the legendary barman pegged the idea to swap the base spirits on one of his regular customers, a young literary magazine editor named Erskine Gwynne. His publication, as you may have already guessed, was called The Boulevardier.
