Bijou

Gin, green Chartreuse, and sweet vermouth — Harry Johnson's 1900 Bartenders' Manual creation named bijou (jewel), each ingredient mapping to a gemstone.

The Bijou is a Gilded Age cocktail of extraordinary elegance, combining gin, green Chartreuse, and sweet vermouth with orange bitters in a formula created by Harry Johnson and published in his 1900 Bartenders' Manual — a revised edition of the influential manual Johnson had first published in 1882. Johnson named the drink bijou, the French word for jewel, and presented each ingredient as representing a different gemstone: gin for diamond, reflecting the spirit's clarity and brilliance; green Chartreuse for emerald, matching the liqueur's vivid color; and sweet vermouth for ruby, reflecting the wine's deep red tones. The formula represents some of the most ambitious spirit pairing of its era: gin's juniper and botanical complexity, green Chartreuse's extraordinary 130-botanical herbal depth produced by Carthusian monks at the Grande Chartreuse monastery since at least 1764, and sweet vermouth's spiced wine richness create a stirred cocktail of layered complexity that the Old Fashioned framework — spirit, sweetener, bitters — cannot match. The Bijou fell into obscurity through Prohibition and the mid-20th century's preference for simpler preparations, but cocktail historian Ted Haigh's 2004 book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails included it among the pre-Prohibition drinks most deserving of revival, and it reappeared on craft cocktail menus through the 2000s as bartenders discovered its structural sophistication.