Sazerac cocktail

Sazerac cocktail , an almost mythically alluring mix of rye whisky, sugar, and Peychaud’s bitters served in an absinthe-rinsed glass, is an item of New Orleans identity, and indeed in 2008 the Louisiana state legislature declared it the official cocktail of New Orleans. While there is general agreement that the drink was invented at the Sazerac House saloon on Royal Street in New Orleans’s French Quarter, when that was and what its original form was are subjects of enduring contention.

The Louisiana-based Sazerac Company—maker of, among other things, Sazerac Rye whisky and Peychaud’s Bitters—follows the 1930s historian of New Orleans drinks Stanley Clisby Arthur (1881–1963) in asserting that the first Sazerac was mixed and popularized by Antoine Amedie Peychaud at his pharmacy on Royal Street, using his proprietary bitters and Sazerac de Forge cognac, and that this became the specialty of the Sazerac House (named after the cognac, which it distributed) in the 1850s. See Sazerac Co. and Sazerac House. According to this theory, the drink’s base was switched to rye in 1873, and the absinthe added around the same time.

Unfortunately, Arthur’s account is undercut by numerous errors, accidental and deliberate, and corroborating evidence for his claims is scarce. See Arthur, Stanley Clisby. The Sazerac cocktail was first mentioned in print only in 1899 and does not appear in the great many known newspaper articles about the Sazerac House from the 1850s until then, nor in any of its advertisements. The articles do not mention any cocktail specialty at all until 1895, while all the advertisements prove is that the bar carried Sazerac cognac and Peychaud’s Bitters. But the newspapers also show that it carried several other types of cognac and bitters as well, including the popular Otard and Boker’s brands, and that many other bars in New Orleans and throughout America also carried Sazerac de Forge cognac and Peychaud’s Bitters. If the bar was making Sazerac brandy cocktails with Peychaud’s, they weren’t the only ones it was making, and it wasn’t the only place making them. Indeed, as early as 1843 the New York Sunday Mercury was saying (perhaps with some exaggeration) that wherever one ordered a cocktail, one would receive “a beverage compounded of brandy, sugar, absynthe [sic], bitters and ice.” See cocktail.

The part of the Sazerac cocktail’s history that we can document begins in September 1895, when a thousand-word puff piece on the Sazerac House notes that bartender and co-owner Vincent Miret (1847–1899) had a “reputation as the best mixer of whisky cocktails in the City of New Orleans.” At some point between that year (as the bar claimed on its trademark application) and 1899, when they first appear in advertisements, the Sazerac House began selling a line of bottled cocktails. There were six, including a plain Whisky Cocktail, but no Sazerac cocktail per se.

Meanwhile, however, the bar’s version of its Whisky Cocktail had become widely imitated in the Crescent City. Not the precise formula, which was proprietary (according to a handwritten recipe sheet owned by the grandnephew of Chris O’Reilly, the bar’s manager in the 1910s, it only differed from a standard Whisky Cocktail by using a dash of maraschino and both Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters), but rather the way the bartenders at the Sazerac had of “dashing … absinthe into the glass into which the mixture is to be strained—first, however, throwing the absinthe out of the tumbler so as to leave only the aroma, minus the taste” (thus the Chicago Inter Ocean in 1901). The drink is still made the same way today.

By then, with the death of Miret, his partner Billy Wilkinson (1854–1904) had taken over as the bar’s Whisky Cocktail specialist, and it was on his watch that the Sazerac Whisky Cocktail became the Sazerac cocktail (indeed, local opinion at the time had it that he was the Sazerac’s creator, as the Times-Picayune stated in 1902). With the bar’s bottled cocktails gaining national distribution and New Orleans rapidly developing as a tourist hub, having a Sazerac at the Sazerac House soon became one of the things a man had to do when he visited the city (the bar did not admit women). By 1910, bartenders around the nation were mixing their versions of the Sazerac, which enjoyed a vogue among the sort of dedicated drinkers who found a Bronx or even a Martini insufficiently boozy, among them the short story writer O. Henry, who had one or more every afternoon at the café next to his New York apartment. See Bronx Cocktail. The irony is that, aside from the novel technique for incorporating the absinthe, the Sazerac was virtually identical to Jerry Thomas’s 1876 Improved Whisky Cocktail. Its popularity shows how much the American idea of the cocktail had changed in thirty years, from a glass of iced spirits with accents to a harmonious blend of spirits and other, less alcoholic ingredients.

After the repeal of Prohibition, New Orleans embraced the Sazerac cocktail anew, although its birthplace was gone, and one of its key ingredients, absinthe, was illegal. But the Roosevelt Hotel built the drink a new headquarters in 1949 when it opened its Sazerac Bar, and local substitutes such as Herbsaint and Green Opal took the place of the absinthe. The city’s bars continued to make the drink for the locals and a few adventurous tourists, even as other, splashier drinks stepped into the spotlight. See Bourbon Street Drinks; Hurricane. In the rest of the world, the drink occupied a space halfway between nostalgia and legend. By the end of the twentieth century, Peychaud’s Bitters were practically unavailable outside of New Orleans, and the balance had tilted toward legend. With the cocktail renaissance, all of that would change. Odd bitters, absinthe, and rye whisky were three of the secret handshakes of the new craft-cocktail movement, and the Sazerac rode the renewal of interest in all three back into rude good health. Today it is one of the unassailable classics, a drink that every good bartender is expected to have mastered.

Recipe (Miret-Wilkinson Sazerac): Fill a small Old-Fashioned glass with ice and let it chill. In a second one, combine 5 ml rich simple syrup, 3 ml maraschino liqueur (optional), 2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters, 1 dash Angostura bitters, and 60 ml straight rye whisky. Add ice and stir. Empty the first glass, pour 5 ml absinthe into it, swirl it around and dump it out. Strain the mixed drink into it and twist lemon peel over the top.

“The merchants’ Train Home.” New Orleans Picayune, May 29, 1902, 3.

“The Sazerac.” New Orleans Semi-Weekly Times-Democrat, September 1, 1895, 16.

“Sazerac Cocktail.” Recipe sheet, presumably written by Christopher O’Reilly, ca. 1910, attached to author’s correspondence with Stephen Joseph of New Orleans, May 5, 2020.

“Two Features of New Orleans.” Chicago Sunday Inter Ocean, February 17, 1901, 4.

Wondrich, David. “Is the Sazerac a New Orleans Cocktail?” Daily Beast, April 24, 2017. https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-the-sazerac-a-new-orleans-cocktail (accessed March 11, 2021).

By: David Wondrich

“As a ladies’ drink the Sazerac Cocktail has no equal.” 1902 advertisement for the Sazerac line of bottled cocktails. Eventually only the Whisky Cocktail remained, as the Sazerac. Source: Wondrich Collection.