The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of Peychaud’s Bitters

Peychaud’s Bitters is a popular, bright-red brand of aromatic or cocktail bitters created in New Orleans in the nineteenth century and now made and sold by the Sazerac Co., also based in that city. The proprietary recipe includes several herbs and spices that yield a zesty blend of anise, nutmeg, and clove notes with a slightly sweet, floral taste. Peychaud’s Bitters were among the popular brands of the nineteenth century, and one of the few surviving today. They are essential to numerous classic cocktails, such as the Sazerac, the Vieux Carré, the Cocktail à la Louisiane, the Star, the Metropole, and a few early versions of the Manhattan. They are particularly prized by modern mixologists in cocktails with brandy or scotch whisky.

Peychaud’s American Aromatic Bitters, as they were originally called (during the Civil War “American” became “Southern American”), were invented by New Orleans pharmacist Antoine Amédée Peychaud (1803–1883). Peychaud was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue and came to New Orleans as an infant during the slave rebellions (1791–1804) that resulted in the establishment of the independent Republic of Haiti. Peychaud opened his pharmacy in 1834 at 123 Royal Street (now believed to be 437 Royal, near the corner of St. Louis). He introduced his bitters sometime between 1849, when he was still advertising his version of Stoughton’s Bitters, and 1857. See Cock-Tail. In June, 1857, Peychaud advertised in the New Orleans Bee that “this cordial has been introduced into general use in the Sazerac House, and other principal Coffee-Houses in this city” (note that in New Orleans “coffee house” was synonymous with “bar”). It is very likely that his bitters were used in making cocktails there, including ones with the Sazerac cognac the bar carried, among other cognacs. See Sazerac House. In 1858, to increase sales, Peychaud reduced his product’s level of bitterness, and indeed to this day Peychaud’s is among the less bitter members of its class.

In 1868, Peychaud was forced to sell the Royal Street building that contained his shop and house; thereafter, he sold or licensed his trademark and formula to a succession of local pharmacists, while also compounding the same formula for Thomas Handy, then proprietor of the Sazerac House, to be sold under the Handy name. This led to a period in the 1890s when three different people in New Orleans were making Peychaud’s formula in competition (lawsuits ensued).

Eventually the competitors fell away, and the brand went to the L. E. Jung company, which secured its national distribution in the 1890s and made the bitters until 1940. The brand was acquired a few years later by the Schenley conglomerate, which sold it to the Sazerac Co. in 1970.

According to New Orleans folklore, A. A. Peychaud was the inventor of not only the world’s first cocktail but the term itself. In Old New Orleans (1936) and Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em (1937), Stanley Clisby Arthur identified that ur-cocktail as a mixture of Sazerac du Forge et Fils cognac, sugar, Peychaud’s bitters, and water, served in an hourglass-shaped egg cup (in French, a coquetier, which sounds something like “cocktail”) and attributed it to Peychaud himself. According to his obituary, however, Peychaud was eighty years old when he died on June 30, 1883. Inasmuch as the word “cocktail” was first defined in an 1806 newspaper, it seems unlikely that a three-year-old Peychaud could have been a pharmacist, much less invented an iconic drink. But isn’t it pretty to think so?

Peychaud’s Bitters

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