Sazerac

This article is about the cocktail. For the company and its brand of rye whiskey, see Sazerac Company.

Sazerac

IBA Official Cocktail
A Sazerac at the Sazerac Bar, The Roosevelt New Orleans Hotel
Type	Cocktail
Primary alcohol by volume	Cognac
Served	Straight up; without ice
Standard garnish	Lemon peel
Standard drinkware	Old Fashioned glass
IBA specified ingredients*	5 cl Cognac 1 cl Absinthe One sugar cube Two dashes Peychaud's Bitters
Preparation	Rinse a chilled old-fashioned glass with the absinthe, add crushed ice and set it aside. Stir the remaining ingredients over ice and set it aside. Discard the ice and any excess absinthe from the prepared glass, and strain the drink into the glass. Add the Lemon peel for garnish.
Notes	Note: The original recipe changed in the latter part of the 19th century. Rye whiskey was substituted when cognac became difficult to obtain.

The Sazerac is a local New Orleans variation of a Cognac or whiskey cocktail, named for the Sazerac de Forge et Fils brand of Cognac brandy that served as its original main ingredient. The drink is most traditionally a combination of cognac or rye, absinthe, Peychaud's Bitters, and sugar, although bourbon whiskey and/or Herbsaint are sometimes substituted. Some claim it is the oldest known American cocktail, with origins in pre–Civil War New Orleans, although drink historian David Wondrich is among those who dispute this, and American instances of published usage of the word cocktail to describe a mixture of spirits, bitters, and sugar can be traced to the dawn of the 19th century.

Characteristics

The defining feature of the Sazerac is its method of preparation, which commonly involves two chilled old-fashioned glasses. The first glass is swirled with a wash of absinthe for its flavor and strong scent. The second glass is used to combine the remaining ingredients, which are stirred with ice, then strained into the first glass. Various anisettes such as pastis, Pernod, or Herbsaint are common substitutes when absinthe is unavailable. In New Orleans, Herbsaint is most commonly used due to the absence of absinthe in the U.S. market from 1912 until 2007.

History

Around 1850, Sewell T. Taylor sold his New Orleans bar, The Merchants Exchange Coffee House, to become an importer of spirits, where he began to import a brand of cognac named Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils. Meanwhile, Aaron Bird assumed proprietorship of the Merchants Exchange, and changed its name to Sazerac Coffee House. Legend has it that Bird began serving the "Sazerac Cocktail", made with Sazerac Cognac imported by Taylor, and allegedly with bitters being made by local apothecary, Antoine Amedie Peychaud. The Sazerac Coffee House subsequently changed hands several times, when around 1870, Thomas Handy became its proprietor. It is around this time that the primary ingredient changed from cognac to rye whiskey due to the phylloxera epidemic in Europe that devastated the vineyards of France. At some point before his death in 1889, Handy recorded the recipe for the cocktail, which made its first printed appearance in William T. "Cocktail Bill" Boothby's 1908 The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them, although this recipe calls for Selner Bitters, not Peychaud's. After absinthe was banned in the US in 1912, it was replaced by various anise-flavored liqueurs, most notably the locally produced Herbsaint, which first appeared in 1934.

The Sazerac is a simple variation on a plain whiskey or Cognac cocktail (alcohol, sugar, water, and bitters), and could have been ordered in any latter 19th Century bar in the US as a whiskey cocktail with a dash of absinthe. It was this type of variation to the cocktail that caused patrons uninterested in the new complexities of cocktails to request their drinks be made the Old Fashioned way. By the early 20th Century, simple cocktails like the Sazerac had become a somewhat rare curiosity, which would eventually rekindle their popularity.

The creation of the Sazerac has also been credited to Antoine Amédée Peychaud, the Creole apothecary who emigrated to New Orleans from the West Indies, and set up shop in the French Quarter in the early 19th Century. He was known to dispense a proprietary mix of aromatic bitters from an old family recipe. According to popular myth, he served his drink in the large end of an egg cup that was called a coquetier in French, and that the Americanized mispronunciation resulted in the word "cocktail". This belief was debunked when it was discovered that the term "cocktail" as a type of drink first appeared in print at least as far back as 1803, and was defined in print in 1806 as "a mixture of spirits of any kind, water, sugar and bitters, vulgarly called a bittered sling.".

Official cocktail of New Orleans

In March 2008, Louisiana state senator Edwin R. Murray (D-New Orleans) filed Senate Bill 6 designating the Sazerac as Louisiana's official state cocktail. The bill was defeated on April 8, 2008. After further debate, on June 23, 2008, the Louisiana Legislature agreed to proclaim the Sazerac as New Orleans' official cocktail.

In popular culture

A Sazerac cocktail features prominently in an episode of the TV series Treme when chef Janette Desautel (played by Kim Dickens) tosses one in the face of restaurant critic and food writer Alan Richman (appearing as himself). Richman had angered many New Orleanians in 2006 with an article in the magazine GQ in which he criticized New Orleans' food culture post-Katrina. Despite reservations, he agreed to participate in the scene and called Sazerac "a good choice of weaponry, because it symbolizes the city".

In the TV series Covert Affairs, season 2 episode 13, A Girl Like You, Mossad Agent Eyal Lavin and CIA Agent Annie Walker trade suggestions of where to find the best Sazerac with Annie ordering one at the conclusion of the episode.

In the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Benjamin's father orders two Whiskey Sazeracs when first meeting his son at a brothel in New Orleans.

In the film State of the Union (1948), starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as political campaigners, one of the Southern guests of Hepburn's character introduces her to Sazeracs and she becomes intoxicated on them.

In the film Live and Let Die (1973), Felix Leiter (David Hedison) orders two Sazeracs at the fictional Filet of Soul restaurant in New Orleans.

In The Andy Griffith Show season 3 Andy's girlfriend Peggy orders a Sazerac while out to dinner in a fancy restaurant.

In the book series, "Honor Bound" by W.E.B. Griffin, the Sazerac cocktail is popular with OSS agent Cletus Frade, and is mentioned in several other books by the same author.

Brands and variants

The Zazarac cocktail is a variant of the Sazerac. The addition of several types of bitters also makes this a spicy drink.

Sazerac is also a brand of rye whiskey produced by the Sazerac Company.

See also

• List of cocktails