In its unique formulation, the Bijou is a real relic of the Nineties. First revealed in C.F. Lawlor’s 1895 guide The Mixicologist, the drink was conceived as an equal-parts cocktail that includes gin, candy vermouth and Grand Marnier—three elements then-new to the States and shortly making waves. But it surely’s Harry Johnson’s Bijou from 1900 that has lived on. His recipe swaps out the orange liqueur in favor of inexperienced Chartreuse and provides a touch of orange bitters, maybe as a nod to the citrus aspect of the unique, and is garnished with an expressed lemon twist and a cherry “or a medium-sized olive,” a flourish that was not unprecedented within the later Gilded Age.
Estelle Bossy by no means considered the Bijou as her drink, however she did assume, “There’s a manner for me to make this drink one thing I really like.” The chance arose whereas growing the Francophile drinks program on the newly opened Le Rock in New York Metropolis, the place she works because the beverage director. After years of slinging amaro and Negronis at Italian properties, together with Del Posto and La Sirena, Bossy was excited to create a program round natural liqueurs, eaux de vie, Armagnac and elixirs from France and the encompassing areas.
Nonetheless, Bossy’s coaching in Italianate cocktails got here in helpful when approaching this specific drink. Although she doesn’t view the Bijou as a Negroni by any means, her Bijou Blanc, which builds from the unique equal-parts components, is akin to making use of the White Negroni remedy to the basic.
The selection to swap out candy vermouth for lighter, brighter aromatized wines addressed Bossy’s largest problem with the unique spec, specifically, that it was too candy. “What I wished to do to make the Bijou one thing I actually appreciated was dry it out,” she says. To take action, Bossy opts for a half-ounce every of the bianco and extra-dry vermouth types from Bordiga, a Piedmontese producer that forages lots of its botanicals from the Occidental Alps. It’s a transfer that nods to Ted Saucier’s 1951 recipe for the Bijou, which consists of equal elements Grand Marnier and dry vermouth, plus Angostura bitters. The 2 vermouths mix to contribute floral, bitter and contemporary herb flavors to the Bijou Blanc, and, Bossy says, “they’ve bought nice construction.”
The place the unique Bijou calls particularly for Plymouth gin (an altogether totally different fashion from London dry), which exhibits up often in turn-of-the-century cocktails, Bossy as an alternative turns to 4 Pillars Navy Energy, which channels the earthiness of the Plymouth fashion. Its notes of turmeric and citrus floor the drink’s wild herbaceous high quality and the excessive proof (58.8 p.c) permits Bossy to maintain the equal-parts composition of the unique. “Somewhat than upping the gin and bringing down the Chartreuse, upping the ABV of the gin simply labored higher for me,” she says.
Lastly, the all-important liqueur element. Bossy is a longtime Chartreuse devotee, however that didn’t cease her from making an attempt a wide range of liqueurs and mixtures thereof in her Bijou spec. She experimented with subbing yellow Chartreuse in for inexperienced, utilizing a mixture of inexperienced and yellow, and even seeking to different conventional natural liqueurs, just like the Abruzzese Centerbe, as an alternative. In the long run, she caught with a full ounce of inexperienced Chartreuse, which retains the ABV sturdy, delivers most taste, and permits her to serve the drink on the rocks with out worrying that it might deteriorate shortly. As Bossy explains, “A drink doesn’t simply have to style good once I put it down. It must style good if it takes 4 to 5 minutes to get to the desk from the service bar.”
With a lot of the drink’s parts settled, Bossy deemed the orange bitters within the basic spec pointless, however she did make one main addition: a quarter-ounce of the French gentian liqueur Salers, which reinforces the gin’s earthiness in addition to the bitter spine of the vermouths. Then, to complete, as an alternative of the cherry or olive from Johnson’s recipe, the drink is garnished with a easy lemon peel reduce right into a pennant form, expressed then hooked up to a good-looking picket choose to resemble a flag.
To say that Bossy’s Bijou Blanc is a departure from the unique can be truthful, however with tie-ins to every of its three predecessors, it seems like a becoming continuation of the Bijou lineage. And by giving the drink a decidedly French twist, Bossy’s take is a welcome shift from the Italocentric nature defining a lot of American cocktail tradition as we speak. As she explains of the deliberate departure, “We don’t obtain greatness if we simply do what all people else is doing.”
