The Sazerac – A New Orleans Tradition

The official cocktail of New Orleans, the Sazerac, has a storied history. Some claim it to be America’s first ever “cocktail.” Whether that is true or not is beyond the scope of this blog, but it is understood that the story of the Sazerac began with Antoine Amedie Peychaud.

Peychaud owned a New Orleans apothecary in the 1830s where he created the now popular Peychaud’s Bitters. Beyond filling prescriptions, Mr. Peychaud also treated his friends and customers to brandy toddies, combining his bitters with Sazerac de Forge et Fils cognac. Apparently the drink became so popular that a local bar, the Sazerac Coffee House, started buying his bitters and mixing a blend of the Sazerac cognac, bitters, sugar, and absinthe as their signature cocktail.

By the 1870s, Thomas Handy had taken over the Sazerac Coffee House and modified the recipe for the Sazerac cocktail, swapping out the cognac for American Rye whiskey. The reason for the swap? Phylloxera! Yes, here is just one of the moments where cocktail and wine history collide. In the late 19th century, the tiny phylloxera aphid was chewing up the roots of vineyards all across Europe, decimating French wine production, and American devotees of French brandy had to find a substitute. For Thomas Handy and the Sazerac cocktail, that substitute was rye whiskey.

I happen to prefer my Sazeracs with rye, although there are restaurants and bars across the country that offer the drink with cognac. There are those who claim you must use the Sazerac brand of rye whiskey, or the absinthe must actually be Herbsaint pastis (which isn’t really absinthe, but an anise-flavored liquor) or that Peychauds bitters are the only bitters that are “authentic” or “traditional.” Tradition is great, but after playing with Sazerac recipes and proportions, mine include:

• 1 sugar cube or 1 tsp simple syrup (demerera preferred in either case)
• 3 dashes of Peychaud’s bitters
• 2 dashes of Angostura bitters
• 2 oz Rye Whiskey
• lemon peel
• absinthe for the rinse

First, fill your rocks glass with ice and water to chill it down. Once cold, lose that ice water and rinse the glass with absinthe.

Next, muddle the sugar and the bitters, then add the whiskey. Stir with ice, then strain into your previously chilled absinthe-rinsed glass.

Pinch a lemon peel over the top, you can even run it around the rim, but then discard. Some people serve with the lemon as a garnish or toss the lemon peel right into the cocktail. I do neither because I think it disrupts the balance of the drink.

*One tip – when I first starting making Sazeracs, I struggled with dilution. You need to stir the cocktail with ice long enough to get proper dilution. Too little and the drink will taste hot and unbalanced, too much and it’ll taste watery. The problem? I’ve found the proper dilution changes depending on which whiskey and which absinthe (or herbsaint, etc) you use. When you make your first Sazerac, have a couple of little cocktail straws at the ready to taste the drink during the stirring portion so you can strain right when the cocktail tastes balanced to you.

**Some people take their Sazeracs very seriously. Jeffrey Morganthaler has described Sazeracs served to him as “a warm shot of rye with a drop of Peychaud’s” or “a foamy rye Cosmopolitan,” and has written an extremely entertaining article called The Dos and Don’ts of Sazeracs. He uses less Angostura than me, but like all of his writing, it is an entertaining and informative read.