A good whiskey shelf does not need to be deep. It needs to be honest. One bottle for a Tuesday night when all you want is a finger of something warm over ice, one for a dinner party where somebody is going to ask for an old fashioned, one for the friend who knows what she is talking about, one for a birthday, and one for the night you actually want to sit down with a book and pay attention. Five bottles, five reasons, five prices that scale with the occasion. Here is what I would stock right now, all American, all on liquor store shelves in Dallas this week.
Start with Buffalo Trace, somewhere around twenty-five to thirty-two dollars when you can find it at list price. This is the workhorse. Ninety proof, low-rye mash bill, and a flavor profile built on caramel, vanilla, and a gentle oak finish that does not challenge anyone. The only catch is that Buffalo Trace has gotten harder to find at its real price because the distillery’s reputation has outrun its supply, so if you see it on a shelf for under thirty-five dollars, grab two. It works neat, over ice, in an old fashioned, in a highball, and as the base of just about any bourbon cocktail you want to make. This is the bottle that lives on the bar cart and gets poured the most.
Move up to the thirty-five to forty-dollar tier and I would go with Knob Creek Small Batch 9-Year. This is Jim Beam’s older cousin, a hundred proof, and since 2020 has been carrying the nine-year age statement again after a few years without it. Deeper than Buffalo Trace, oakier, with caramel and brown sugar and a little nuttiness pulling through. Knob Creek is the bottle a lot of bartenders actually reach for when they want a bourbon with real backbone in a cocktail without spending real money. It is the correct choice for a boulevardier, which I will get to in a minute.
At the forty-five to sixty-dollar tier, Willett Pot Still Reserve. The distinctive decanter shaped like a pot still is what most people recognize first, but do not let the bottle fool you into thinking the whiskey is just packaging. Willett has been blending and now distilling their own juice in Bardstown since their return to production in 2012, and the Pot Still Reserve is eight to ten years old at ninety-four proof, hand-selected, small batch in the actual meaning of the phrase. Vanilla, soft spice, a little citrus, a long graceful finish. This is the bottle you pour when a friend comes over and you want to pour something that looks as good as it tastes.
Into the fifty-five to sixty-five-dollar range and I am reaching for Woodford Reserve Double Oaked. The regular Woodford is a fine bourbon. The Double Oaked version is a different animal. Woodford takes their standard bourbon, pulls it out of the first barrel, and finishes it in a second barrel that has been deeply toasted and lightly charred. What you get is bourbon that tastes like dessert — vanilla, caramel, dark chocolate, toasted almond, a finish that goes on and on. This is the bottle for the person at your table who says they do not like bourbon. They are almost always wrong, and this is the bottle that proves it.
And for the top of the shelf, the bottle you open when a birthday or an anniversary or a long-awaited visit earns it, Angel’s Envy Port-Finished Bourbon at fifty to sixty-five dollars. Wes Henderson and his late father Lincoln Henderson, who spent decades at Brown-Forman before starting Angel’s Envy, finish their Kentucky bourbon in ruby port casks from Portugal for three to six months. The result is a bourbon that carries all the standard caramel and vanilla notes underneath, with raisin and dark fruit and a little port-wine sweetness on top. A beautiful pour neat, in a small glass, on a cold night. The kind of bottle you nurse rather than drink.
Five bottles, five price points, one shelf that covers every reason to pour a glass.
Now the cocktail. A boulevardier is what an old fashioned becomes when it grows up and spends a year abroad. It is a Negroni built on bourbon instead of gin, which sounds like a small swap but completely changes the drink. Bitter where a Negroni is herbaceous, warm where a Negroni is bracing, a drink for the second hour of a dinner party rather than the first. Any of the five bourbons above will work. I usually reach for the Knob Creek for this one, but if you want to impress, use the Woodford Double Oaked and watch what happens.
The Boulevardier
Makes one cocktail. Takes about two minutes.
Ingredients
- 1½ ounces bourbon (Knob Creek is my default; Woodford Double Oaked if you want to show off)
- 1 ounce Campari
- 1 ounce sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica Formula if you have it, Dolin Rouge if you do not)
- 1 orange peel, for garnish
- 1 Luxardo cherry, for garnish (optional but recommended)
Instructions
1. Fill a mixing glass with ice. Not the drinking glass. The mixing glass, or any pint glass you have on hand.
2. Add the bourbon, Campari, and sweet vermouth to the ice.
3. Stir for about thirty seconds. Stir, do not shake. Shaking aerates the drink and makes it cloudy, which is wrong for a spirit-forward cocktail like this one. You want the boulevardier clear and silky.
4. Strain into a rocks glass over one large ice cube, or into a chilled coupe if you are feeling elegant.
5. Express the orange peel over the drink by holding it skin-side down and giving it a firm twist. You will see a little spray of oil hit the surface. That is the whole point. Drop the peel into the glass.
6. Add a Luxardo cherry if you have them. Worth keeping a jar in the fridge.
7. Sip slowly. This is not a drink to hurry.
A note. The sweet vermouth is where most home boulevardiers fall apart. Cheap vermouth tastes like cough syrup in this drink. Spend the extra eight or ten dollars on a bottle of Carpano Antica Formula and keep it in the refrigerator once opened. Vermouth is wine. It oxidizes. A bottle left on the counter for six months is not going to make you a good cocktail. A bottle kept cold and used within a couple of months will. The cocktail is built on three ingredients. All three have to be right.
