The Spirits #49: The Sazerac
~ Absinthe Rinse ~ The Storming of the Sazerac ~ Say Don't You Know Me? I'm Your Native Son ~ George Porter Jr x George Eliot ~
📚 THE SPIRITS (i.e. book that inspired this newsletter) is available once more! You can find it at: Bookshop.org, Foyles, Blackwells, Hive, Waterstones, Amazon and even WH Smith.
BONUS: If you feel inclined to subscribe to the priciest tier of the newsletter (that’s the £100 Founding Member version…) I will send you a signed edition of the book with your own bespoke recipe written in my very own hand! A singular Christmas present! Just press this button and check the ‘Founding Member’ box. 👇
~ THE SAZERAC ~
Dash absinthe
60ml brandy (see note 1. below)
A teaspoon of sugar
Dash Peychaud’s bitters
Lemon zest
First of all, take an old fashioned glass, pour in a dash of absinthe and swirl it all the way round the interior of the glass so it’s coated. Discard (or drink?) any excess and now place this absinthe-rinsed glass in the freezer.
Now make the cocktail in a separate glass or similar vessel. Saturate the sugar in bitters, pour over the brandy, and muddle/stir until the sugar is fully dissolved. Now add some large ice cubes and stir patiently until you reach optimal temperature (i.e. very cold) and dilution (i.e. no harsh alcohol burn). Remove the absinthe-y glass from the freezer and strain the cocktail into it. Express the lemon zest twist on top, rub it round the rim too, and discard. You may now drink the cocktail.
Some Sazerac pointers:
1) The earliest version of the Sazerac was brandy-based. Over time, rye whiskey came to be preferred. Most bartenders these days split the difference with 30ml rye, 30ml brandy. But you can draw that line where you like. I opted for brandy for this one just to differentiate it from an Old Fashioned. But I personally find, ooh, 50ml brandy and 10ml rye to be optimal. I used Rémy Martin 1738 and Adnam’s Rye Single Malt, product placement fans!
2) What’s the whole deal with the rinsed-glass, no-ice, no-garnish thing? The logic is something like this. The Sazerac is an old-fashioned ‘Brandy Cocktail’ only served without ice. Normally you’d serve a drink like that ‘up’ in a fancy cocktail glass. However! The absinthe rinse is the crucial element here. The idea is that you get the scent of absinthe without too much of the taste. A cocktail coupe doesn’t give you much room for rinsing; a large glass with no ice allows you to get your schnozz right in there.
3) It’s a good idea to keep absinthe in a small diffuser, so you can emit a fine spray of the stuff over the glass. I can’t help feeling it’s a sin to waste absinthe by discarding it.
4) Peychaud’s bitters is the classic bitters of New Orleans, whence this drink famously hails. Peychaud’s is bright red (and hence gives cocktails a nice pinky colour) and based on gentian but with a pronounced anise flavour. It’s a great bottle to have (only about a tenner) but just use Angostura and maybe a drop more absinthe if you don’t have any.
So glad you dropped by…
…I am the journalist Richard Godwin and this is my cocktail newsletter. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, orgeat ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations here - and here is the full archive of weekly specials. Scroll to the bottom to find out what to get in for next week. Please consider becoming a member of the ✨THE CABINET✨ for the full experience. This way you will learn about exciting things like Maraschino and Green Chartreuse and Apricot Brandy.
Sharing is caring:
THE Sazerac is the venerable cocktail of New Orleans, where it was the house drink of the Sazerac House. A New York Times correspondent once described the difference between the drinks served there and those at your regular saloon as “the difference between a hand-carved piece of furniture and a Grand Rapids product.” Grand Rapids being the place in the US where crappy furniture is made. But you figured that out.
The Sazerac bar is additionally famous as it was stormed in September 1949 by a group of female drinkers who were appalled at the “men only” policy. The bewildered bartenders had no choice but to prepare a few dozen Sazeracs and from that day forth, it has permitted women drinkers too. Which just goes to show that direct action works.
The Sazerac bar has since been demolished. A Walgreens pharmacy now stands upon the original site; its associated memorabilia has been transplanted to the Roosevelt Hotel. But the drink itse’f has become enshrined as a sort of cocktailer’s cocktail. An Old Fashioned is nice… but a Sazerac is the sort of thing to use your very best spirits on, a drink to take extra special care with, one to savour. It is for this reason I like to stick to the slightly more painstaking method of crushing sugar granules as opposed to hastily lobbing a bit of sugar syrup in the glass - and then stirring very patiently and carefully. The Sazerac - with its minimal appearance - offers no room to hide, so it pays to get it right.
PLAYLIST
A HUNDRED apologies. I didn’t manage a playlist last week. But this week, we are in New Orleans, birthplace of jazz, so there is no excuse! Here are some songs from the Crescent City that only a dead person wouldn’t like.
A small fact which pleases me immensely as I love them both: George Porter Jr, visionary bassist in the peerless Nola funk band The Meters, played session bass on Tori Amos’s Boys for Pelé.
THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
Johanna Thomas-Corr on Middlemarch at 150 (New Statesman)
Loved this by Sirin Kale on time millionaires (The Guardian)
David Remnick on Paul McCartney. I mean. (New Yorker)
An enjoyable trawl by James Marriott through novels written by politicians (The Times)
I explained what Mercury Retrograde is for the benefit of readers of (The Oldie)
SHOPPING LIST
Gin, dry vermouth, a pickled silverskin onion.
🍸
Enjoyed this!