The Boulevardier has a romantic origin tied to a particularly heady period in cocktail history. According to most sources, it was invented in the 1920s by American expatriate Edward Erskine Gwynne. Gwynne was a sort of Prohibition-era Kardashian who ran off to Paris to gad about, be mistaken for the Prince of Wales, get into fights in cabarets, and start a literary magazine to ape the New Yorker. It’s not clear that his Boulevardier magazine had any lasting impact on the world of literature, but Gwynne did lend the name to the fantastic drink he shared with Harry McElhone (of Harry’s New York Bar, located in Paris), who recorded it in his book Barflies and Cocktails. Gwynne went on to die a broken and forgotten man, but this drink, his true legacy, is by my lights the most enduring success he might have hoped to achieve. (Spirits/Cocktails)