{"id":556,"date":"2012-10-19T17:22:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T17:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2012\/10\/wedding-cocktails.html"},"modified":"2012-10-19T17:22:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T17:22:08","slug":"wedding-cocktails-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=556","title":{"rendered":"Wedding Cocktails"},"content":{"rendered":"

Co-author of the blog and all-around great guy Tony Hightower<\/a> got married last weekend (to frequent Guest Star and all-around great gal Joanna Scutts<\/a>), and the happy couple requested yours truly to come up with some drinks for the reception.<\/p>\n

We put our heads and palates together, did some brainstorming, some tasting, some trial and error, and came up with three different drinks, all in different styles. To wit:<\/p>\n

\n\"Boulevardier\"The couple loooooves Negronis — the bride named it as her favorite drink — and they have sophisticated friends who aren't afraid of things like Campari. Something from the boozy & bitter kingdom was a definite must, and after some tasting, we settled on the Boulevardier<\/a>. It's kind of a cross between a Manhattan and a Negroni, but more to the point, it's a fantastic, classic, and potent<\/strong> cocktail; first described. as far as I can tell, in Harry McElhone's Barflies and Cocktails<\/a><\/em>, a wonderfully breezy and fun volume published in 1927 by the Harry of Harry's New York Bar<\/a> in Paris. It's an obvious variation on the Old Pal<\/a> – described by the same Harry in a separate book five years earlier — except that it switches rye to bourbon and dry vermouth to sweet. McElhone describes the recipe as originating with one Erskine Gwynne, though, a playboy, prankster<\/a>, and Vanderbilt scion who edited a Parisian literary magazine called The Boulevardier<\/em>. As Toby Cecchini notes in the Times<\/em><\/a>, Richard Knapp of Mother's Ruin<\/a> cuts the Campari by half and adds some homemade pecan orgeat, which makes it a wonderfully voluptuous, drink with some sweet smoothness. Similarly, Locale<\/a> in Astoria, Queens, which hosted the rehearsal dinner, has a "Writer's Block" on the menu, which is essentially a Boulevardier with a brandy brown-sugar butter reduction added…and it's delicious, if a little sweet and heavy on the Christmas spices. <\/p>\n

For the wedding, though, we went with a straight Boulevardier, easily batched for serving lots of thirsty guests. The only changes we made were to double the bourbon, as Cecchini recommended, making it a much more balanced drink, and to rename it to reflect the wedding party's origins:<\/p>\n

The Queen Elizabeth Way <\/strong>(n\u00e9 Boulevardier)<\/p>\n