The Sazerac — America’s First Cocktail

A pharmacist from France opened a shop on Royal Street in 1838. Antoine Amadée Peychaud created bitters there — an ingredient that would become essential to a cocktail bearing someone else's name. Around that same year, the Sazerac was created at the Sazerac Coffee House on Exchange Alley, using Sazerac-de-Forge cognac and Peychaud's bitters. The Louisiana Legislature named it the official cocktail of New Orleans in 2008, but the claim runs deeper: this is a strong candidate for the oldest American cocktail. The drink changed when history forced it to. Phylloxera destroyed the French cognac supply in the 1870s, and rye whiskey replaced the original spirit. The Sazerac adapted and endured — a New Orleans reflex older than the drink itself. The city was founded in 1718 as a French colonial foothold at the portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, built to control the river valley and the Gulf trade routes. It became the largest port in the South, exporting cotton and farm products to Europe and the North. When supply lines broke, the city substituted and kept moving. The Sazerac did the same. The Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel is the canonical place to order one. It arrives stirred, never shaken, no ice in the glass.