Left Hand
The Left Hand is a Boulevardier with three dashes of chocolate bitters in it, which sounds like a footnote until you taste one. Cacao is dry rather than sweet, and it sits exactly between bourbon's barrel vanilla and Campari's bitter orange, joining two things that in a plain Boulevardier stay politely separate. It is attributed to Sam Ross, working out of Milk & Honey in New York in the late 2000s, and it comes as half of a pair. The Right Hand is the same drink with aged rum in place of the bourbon, built by his colleague Michael McIlroy. Two hands, two base spirits, one idea. The proportions are modern: forty-five, twenty-two, twenty-two rather than the equal measures a Boulevardier often takes. That trim is as much a part of the drink as the bitters are, because it is what keeps the Campari framing the whiskey instead of covering it.
Glassware: Nick & Nora Glass
Garnish: Orange Twist and Maraschino Cherry in the house manner
Ingredients
45ml
Barrel vanilla is what the cacao attaches to, so pick a bottling that has some. A higher-rye bourbon keeps a spine through the Campari; a very soft wheated one goes round it rather than through it.
22.5ml
Twenty-two millilitres rather than an equal third. At full measure it flattens the chocolate bitters entirely, and the whole point of the drink is that you can taste them.
22.5ml
A third of the glass, so it matters as much as the whiskey does. Keep it in the fridge: an oxidised vermouth tastes of stewed fruit and cacao does not flatter that at all.
3 dashes
Three dashes, and plain cacao rather than a mole bitter. The dry cacao note bridges the bourbon's vanilla and the Campari's orange, which is the entire modification the drink consists of.
Instructions
Add the bourbon, Campari, sweet vermouth and chocolate bitters to a mixing glass.
Fill with cubed ice and stir for 25 seconds.
Strain into a chilled Nick and Nora glass.
Express an orange twist over the surface and drop it in.
Expert Tip
Three dashes, and use plain chocolate bitters rather than a mole bitter. Mole brings chilli and warm spice along with the cacao, which makes a good drink and a different one; plain chocolate bitters bring dry cacao alone, which is what fits the gap here. Stir it long. Twenty-five seconds over cubed ice, because Campari and sweet vermouth are both sweet and the drink needs enough water to stop them stacking up. Under-diluted, this reads syrupy and the cacao disappears under the sugar. Keep the vermouth fresh. At twenty-two and a half millilitres it is a third of the glass, and an oxidised bottle tastes of stewed fruit, which is the one flavour cacao does not flatter.
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
Milk & Honey opened on New York's Lower East Side in 1999 and spent a decade producing bartenders who went on to run a good proportion of the world's better bars. The Left Hand comes from that room in the late 2000s and is attributed to Sam Ross, who is better known for the Penicillin.
It is one of a pair. Michael McIlroy's Right Hand is the same specification with aged rum in the base, and the two were named as a set in the bar's deliberately flat style: no story, no metaphor, just a note that there are two of them and which is which.
What the Chocolate Bitters Do
A Boulevardier has a gap in it. Bourbon gives you vanilla, caramel and oak; Campari gives you bitter orange and a herbal edge; sweet vermouth sits between them adding weight and sugar. It works, but the whiskey and the Campari never quite meet. They occupy the same glass without much conversation.
Cacao is dry, slightly bitter and faintly fruity, which is exactly the shape of that gap. Three dashes and the drink joins up: the vanilla runs into the cacao, the cacao runs into the orange, and what was two flavours and a bridge becomes one continuous thing. It reads as depth rather than as chocolate, which is why it is easy to miss on a first sip and impossible to unhear afterwards.
The Modern Trim
Forty-five, twenty-two, twenty-two is the modern shape for this family of drinks, and the Left Hand is built to it rather than to equal measures.
The reason is arithmetic. Campari and sweet vermouth are both sweet and both assertive, and at equal thirds they take up two-thirds of the glass between them. Pull them back and the bourbon leads, the bitterness frames rather than floods, and there is room for three dashes of anything to be noticed at all.
Left and Right Together
The pair is worth making side by side, because it isolates exactly one variable. Same Campari, same vermouth, same bitters, same ratio: only the base spirit changes.
Bourbon gives the Left Hand vanilla and a sweet grain edge that leans into the cacao. Aged rum gives the Right Hand molasses and a fruitier, rounder body that leans into the Campari instead. Neither is better. What the comparison shows is how much of a drink's character comes from the base and how much from everything around it, which is a difficult thing to demonstrate any other way.
How to Serve It
Stirred long, strained into a chilled coupe or Nick and Nora, orange twist expressed over the surface and dropped in.
Orange rather than lemon. The Campari and the cacao are both pointing that way already, and the oil finishes the line rather than cutting across it. After dinner is the hour.
The Spirit
Whiskey (Bourbon)The only major whiskey required to use a barrel once. New charred oak is the rule that defines bourbon, gives it its sweetness and colour, and incidentally supplies most of the world's Scotch and rum with somewhere to age.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Left Hand cocktail?
A Boulevardier with three dashes of chocolate bitters: 45ml bourbon, 22.5ml Campari and 22.5ml sweet vermouth, stirred and served up with an orange twist. It is attributed to Sam Ross at Milk & Honey in the late 2000s.
What do the chocolate bitters actually change?
They join the drink up. Bourbon's vanilla and Campari's bitter orange sit apart in a plain Boulevardier; dry cacao occupies the space between them, so the whole thing reads as one continuous flavour rather than two good ones sharing a glass.
What is a Right Hand?
The same recipe with aged rum instead of bourbon, built by Michael McIlroy at the same bar. Making the two together isolates a single variable, which is about the clearest demonstration of what a base spirit contributes that you will find.
How is it different from a Boulevardier?
The bitters and the ratio. A Boulevardier is often equal measures; this pulls the Campari and vermouth back to twenty-two and a half millilitres each against forty-five of bourbon, then adds cacao. Same argument, rather more room in it.
Master the Techniques
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Boulevardier
The Boulevardier was created by Erskine Gwynne, an American expatriate writer in 1920s Paris who published a monthly magazine of the same name for the city’s American community. Harry McElhone documented the drink in his 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails, attributing it to Gwynne. It is a Negroni with bourbon in place of gin, and that single substitution changes the drink more thoroughly than the swap suggests. Where the Negroni is botanical, precise and juniper-forward, the Boulevardier is warmer, rounder and more fruit-driven. Bourbon brings vanilla, caramel and a grain sweetness that gin does not carry, producing a richer balance that sits more naturally after a meal than before one. The ratio here runs slightly bourbon-forward at three to two to two rather than equal parts, because bourbon is heavier and sweeter than gin and equal measures can tip the drink toward cloying against a rich vermouth. It handles equal parts perfectly well too; adjust to the bottles in front of you.
Right Hand
The Right Hand is the rum half of a matched pair. Michael McIlroy built it on the frame Sam Ross had used for the Left Hand, bourbon with Campari, sweet vermouth and chocolate bitters, and swapped the base for aged rum while leaving every other measure exactly where it stood. That single substitution is the whole drink, and it is the cleanest lesson in base spirits the modern canon has to offer. Bourbon brings corn sweetness and vanilla. Aged rum brings molasses, dried fruit and a darker kind of oak. Everything else is held constant, so whatever changes in the glass is attributable to the bottle and to nothing else. Rum against Campari is not an obvious pairing until you have had a Jungle Bird. Dark sugar can stand up to bitter orange where lighter spirits are simply overrun, and here that standoff happens stirred and formal, with the vermouth refereeing and the chocolate bitters sealing the seam between them.
Negroni
The Negroni is the most ordered classic cocktail in the world and the drink that defined the contemporary revival. It is also one of the simplest: equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, stirred and served over ice with an orange peel. That simplicity is a function of how precisely the three are calibrated against one another. The story most commonly told places Count Camillo Negroni at the Caffè Casoni in Florence in 1919, asking Fosco Scarselli to strengthen his Americano by replacing the soda with gin. The account is debated; the structure is not. Both drinks share the same base of Campari and sweet vermouth, and that one substitution turns a sessionable aperitif into one of the most spirit-forward short drinks there is. The sweet vermouth is the most commonly neglected variable. At equal volume it is a third of the drink rather than a background ingredient, and a bottle left open at room temperature for months will define a Negroni more completely than the gin does, with no amount of good Campari correcting it.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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