Sazerac (New Orleans style)

Serve in a

Garnish:

Lemon zest twist

How to make:

Ice glass and set to one side. Separately, in another glass stir other ingredients with ice. Discard ice in the now chilled and set glass aside and rinse with absinthe (or Herbsaint). Then strain cocktail into absinthe/Herbsaint washed glass.

Review:

While bartenders in other cities have complicated the Sazerac by using a combination of spirits [us included - Difford's Sazerac recipe], in New Orleans they keep it simple: straight rye whiskey with a dash of sugar, stirred and strained into an Herbsaint-washed glass.

Variant:

Sazerac Cocktail (Difford's recipe) - my split-spirit recipe and method of serving.
Highland Sazerac - with Chartreause, brandy and single malt scotch.
JP Sazerac - with brand and rye whiskey.
Caribbean Sazerac - with a trio of rums and grenadine syrup.
Chocolate Sazerac - with bourbon and white crème de cacao.
Grand Sazerac - with cognac orange liqueur.
Sage Sazerac - with Pastis, sage leaves and birch eau-de-vie.

History:

The following story originates in Stanley Clisby Arthur's 1937 Famous New Orleans Drinks & how to Mix 'em, and for years, this was accepted as being a true account of the origin of the Sazerac cocktail. However, research by cocktail historian David Wondrich suggests the Sazerac actually originated as a bottled Whiskey Cocktail sold by the Sazerac company. However, "never let the truth stand in the way of a good story."

Brandy-based cocktails were being served in New Orleans before the Sazerac was created, and these early mixed drinks almost certainly included bitters, possibly Stoughton's Bitters, a long-extinct medicinal stomach bitters. The ingredients for the Sazerac have varied over the years, but its flavour has remained distinctive due to one essential ingredient: Peychaud's aromatic bitters, created by Antoine Amedee Peychaud.

His story starts in 1795 when he arrived in New Orleans as a refugee after his father was forced to flee the island of San Domingo and his family's coffee plantation after the slaves rebelled. Antoine grew up to become a pharmacist and bought his own drug and apothecary store at 437 Rue Royale (then No. 123 Royal Street) in 1834. Here, he created an 'American Aromatic Bitter Cordial' and marketed it as a medicinal tonic. Such potions were fashionable then, and there were many similar products.

Antoine also served his bitters mixed with brandy and other liquors, and it has been falsely claimed that the word 'cocktail' originated with Antoine and the measure, known as a 'coquetier', he used to prepare drinks. However, the term "cocktail" first appeared in print in an upstate New York newspaper in 1806 when Antoine was but a child.

Meanwhile, sometime around 1850, Sewell T. Taylor, another New Orleans entrepreneur gave up being a bar owner to move into the liquor business, becoming the local agent for a French cognac company, 'Sazerac-du-Forge et Fils' of Limoges. His bar, the Merchant's Exchange Coffee House at 13 Exchange Alley, was taken over by either Aaron Bird or John B. Schiller.

Exchange Alley used to run between Royal Street and Exchange Place in the French Quarter, where the Wyndham Hotel now stands, a service road under the hotel still links the two streets. It is here, at the Exchange Coffee House, sometime between 1850 and 1859, that the Sazerac Cocktail was created, based on and named after Taylor's Sazerac cognac with Peychaud's aromatic bitters and sugar. The cocktail became the bar's main speciality.

In 1869/70, Thomas H. Handy, the bar's bookkeeper, took over the Exchange Coffee House and renamed it the Sazerac Coffee House after its house cocktail. Meanwhile, Antoine Peychaud fell on hard times and sold his pharmacy store, along with the formula and brand name of his bitters, which Handy acquired in 1873. Having purchased the bar and the bitters required to make its house cocktail, Handy then faced a predicament as cognac, the main ingredient of the Sazerac Cocktail, became hard to obtain.

The phylloxera aphid, a bug which attacks the roots of vines, devastated French vineyards in the late 1860s-1870s and so practically halted cognac production, forcing Handy to change the recipe of the Sazerac Cocktail. He still used the all-important Peychaud's bitters but substituted American-distilled Maryland Club rye whiskey, retaining a dash of cognac. Around this time, perhaps before the change to rye whiskey, a splash of the newly fashionable absinthe was added to the Sazerac. As the cognac became more scarce, so it gradually disappeared from the drink.

To quote from Stanley Clisby Arthur's 1937 Famous New Orleans Drinks & how to mix'em, "The absinthe innovation has been credited to Leon Lamothe who in 1858 was a bartender for Emile Seignouret, Charles Cavaroc & Co., a wine importing firm located in the old Seignouret mansion still standing at 520 Royal Street. More likely it was about 1870 when Lamothe was employed at Pina's restaurant in Burgundy Street that he experimented with absinthe and made the Sazerac what it is today."

Before he died in 1889, Handy disclosed the recipe for his house cocktail to William T. "Cocktail Bill" Boothby who published it in his 1908 book, The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them.

Sazerac (Boothby's recipe)
¾ jigger Whiskey
2 dashes Peychaud
Absinthe to wet glass
½ spoon Sugar syrup
1 slice Lemon peel
Chill cocktail glass, wet with few drops absinthe and toss out. Stir other ingredients well with ice, strain into prepared glass and serve with ice water chaser.

In the 1890s, the Sazerac Company began to bottle and market the Sazerac Cocktail, made with rye whiskey instead of cognac. The cocktail, which continued to be served at the Sazerac Bar, was further adapted in 1912 when absinthe was banned in the US. The Sazerac company started to produce a product called Herbsaint as an absinthe substitute, and although absinthe has been legal in the USA since 2007, most bars in New Orleans continue to make their Sazerac Cocktails with Herbsaint rather than absinthe.

The Sazerac Bar reopened after Prohibition at 300 Carondelet Street. In 1949, Seymour Weiss, the Vice President and Managing Director of the nearby Roosevelt Hotel purchased the rights to use the name Sazerac Bar from the Sazerac Company. He renovated a former Wine and Spirits store on Baronne Street and, on 26th September 1949, opened the new Sazerac Bar. Weiss published that the new bar would abolish its 'men only' rule and welcome women. The move was marketing genius and women flocked to the opening, leading to the event becoming known as 'Storming the Sazerac'.

In 1959, the Sazerac Bar on Baronne Street was closed, and the name transferred to the hotel's Main Bar, which had opened in 1938. Here, the Sazerac Bar remains popular and can be considered the spiritual and actual home of the Sazerac with around 40,000 Sazeracs served there every year. (To allay confusion, the hotel originally opened in 1893 as The Hotel Grunewald, then became The Fairmont, then The Roosevelt before reopening after Hurricane Katrina as The Fairmont.)

In 2007, Ann Tuennerman, then of The New Orleans Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society, lobbied the Louisiana legislature to "Save the Sazerac". The following March, state senator Edwin R. Murray filed a Senate Bill designating the Sazerac as Louisiana's official state cocktail. The bill was defeated on 8 April 2008, but after further debate and lobbying, on 23 June 2008, the Louisiana Legislature passed a bill proclaiming the Sazerac as New Orleans' official cocktail.

Nutrition:

One serving of Sazerac (New Orleans style) contains 159 calories.

Alcohol content:

• 1.3 standard drinks
• 34.16% alc./vol. (68.32° proof)
• 18.7 grams of pure alcohol