Brews You Can Use VI
Brews you can use, and an historical miniature. Plus, I'd never heard of the drink, so I'm guessing others will find it novel, too:Â
The Sazerac, purportedly America's first cocktail, is the emblematic drink of New Orleans. As originally made in the 1850s, it was a blend of Sazerac brandy and sugar, along with bitters invented in the late 1700s by Antoine Amedie Peychaud, a West Indian apothecary. By the 1870s a bartender at the Sazerac Coffee House is said to have added the touch of pouring it into a glass first swirled with a few drops of absinthe. In time rye whiskey, more popular and cheaper, was substituted for the brandy, and Herbsaint, a local anisette first sold in 1933 as an absinthe substitute (absinthe was banned in 1912) came to be used for the swirling.
The trinity of Sazerac ingredients survived Hurricane Katrina: Herbsaint liqueur, Peychaud's Bitters, and Sazerac 18 Year Old Rye Whiskey. All are owned by the Sazerac Company, headquartered in New Orleans in a building that itself survived the storm. The bitters and the whiskey are made in limited quantities in Frankfort, Kentucky, by the Buffalo Trace Distillery; for more information, see www.buffalotrace.com.