Bijou Cocktail
Named after a jewel, built like a crowbar
- Method
- Stirred
- Style
- Classic
- Glass
- Nick and Nora
- Time
- 5 min
Ingredients
- 45mlLondon Dry GinJohnson specified Plymouth
- 22.5mlSweet VermouthA rich Italian style works best here
No Sweet Vermouth? Sherry — the fancy alternative — much richer, so it pairs nicely with spicy spirits like rye whiskey. Not cream sherry.
- 22.5mlGreen ChartreuseNo substitute, and no, Yellow is not the same drink
- 2 dashesOrange Bitters
- —Cherriesfor garnish
- Garnish
- Lemon twist and a cherry
Make it well
Stirred, properly.
All spirit and no citrus, so this one gets .
Add the gin, sweet vermouth, Green Chartreuse and orange to a and fill it with ice.
Stir for 30 to 40 seconds. Chartreuse is 55% and the vermouth brings sugar, so this needs proper to knit together. Stirring it short is the single most common reason people say they don't like the Bijou.
Strain into a chilled Nick and Nora or a small coupe.
a lemon over the surface and drop it in, then add a cherry. Johnson allowed an olive here, which we will leave politely in 1900.
If you want the original, pour it as equal thirds instead: 22.5ml each of gin, vermouth and Chartreuse. Make it once, see what you think, then come back to the ratio above.
On the palate
On the nose it is almost entirely Chartreuse, that wet herb garden smell, with the vermouth's dried fruit and bitter orange sitting underneath. On tasting the gin arrives first and then gets comprehensively overrun: honey, mint, anise and about forty other things you couldn't name in a line-up, finishing long and herbal and properly bitter. The texture is thick and faintly syrupy, and it drinks considerably bigger than it looks. Poured as equal thirds the way Johnson wrote it, the Chartreuse wins outright and the gin may as well not be in the glass, which is why most bars now pour double gin. It was never a subtle drink and it isn't pretending to be one.
Where it came from
Bijou is French for jewel, and the explanation you will find on every cocktail site is that the name refers to the colours of the three ingredients: gin for diamond, vermouth for ruby, Green Chartreuse for emerald. It is a tidy story and it may well be true. It is not something Harry Johnson spelled out in his own entry, though, so treat it as folklore rather than documented fact. What is documented is a bit messier than the usual telling. A Bijou appears in C.F. Lawlor's The Mixicologist in 1895, five years before Johnson, but it is a different drink: equal parts Grand Marnier, Plymouth gin and Italian vermouth, with no Chartreuse anywhere near it. Johnson's version, in the 1900 edition of his New and Improved Illustrated Bartenders' Manual, keeps the equal thirds and the Plymouth gin, swaps the Grand Marnier for green Chartreuse and adds orange bitters. That is the one that survived. So Johnson probably didn't invent the Bijou so much as make the one substitution that mattered. Johnson wrote it as thirds, and thirds is brutal. Green Chartreuse carries 130 botanicals at 55% and does not share a glass politely, and set against an equal measure of sweet vermouth the gin simply disappears. Most bars now pour two parts gin to one each of vermouth and Chartreuse, which is the build above. Purists will tell you that isn't the original, and they are right. Purists are very welcome to drink the original. One practical note. Chartreuse has been hard to come by since the Carthusians capped production in 2023, so if you have a bottle you may be reluctant to spend 22.5ml of it finding out whether you like a drink. Spend it. After the Last Word, this is the best argument for owning Green Chartreuse, and on the right evening it is the better drink of the two.
Keep pouring
If you like the Bijou Cocktail, try these
The bartender’s note
One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.
Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.