Cognac Sazerac

The original New Orleans Sazerac made with cognac instead of rye. Rich, aromatic, and steeped in history.

The Cognac Sazerac restores the Sazerac cocktail to its original pre-phylloxera formula, using cognac rather than the rye whiskey that replaced it after one of the most devastating agricultural crises in European history. The Sazerac was created in New Orleans in the 1850s at the Sazerac Coffee House on Exchange Alley in the French Quarter, where the house spirit was Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils cognac imported from the Charente region of France. The drink combined the cognac with Peychaud's Bitters — the aromatic bitters created by Creole apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud, who had operated a pharmacy on Royal Street and mixed his proprietary bitters formula with cognac for customers since the 1830s — and a rinse of absinthe. The phylloxera epidemic (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae), a root-feeding insect native to North America that was inadvertently introduced to European vineyards in the late 1860s, destroyed an estimated two-thirds of French and European vineyards between 1865 and 1900. The resulting shortage of French cognac forced the Sazerac Coffee House — by then managed by Thomas Handy — to substitute American rye whiskey, which had become the preferred spirit in the transition. The rye version is now the standard Sazerac and was designated the official cocktail of New Orleans by the Louisiana legislature in 2008. The cognac version honors the drink's documented origin and the specific flavor that Peychaud's bitters were originally formulated to complement.