De La Louisiane

A sophisticated New Orleans classic blending rye whiskey with Bénédictine and an absinthe rinse for a complex, aromatic sipper.

De La Louisiane is a pre-World War II New Orleans cocktail whose first published documentation appears in Stanley Clisby Arthur's Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em, published in 1937 — the most comprehensive reference work on New Orleans cocktail history produced during the era when many of the drinks it documented were still in active commercial service. The cocktail was the signature drink of Restaurant de la Louisiane, a venerable French Creole establishment in the French Quarter that had been operating since the late 19th century and served as one of the gathering places of New Orleans' commercial and social elite. The formula combines rye whiskey with sweet vermouth, Bénédictine, Peychaud's Bitters, and a rinse of absinthe — an ingredient roster that connects it to both the Vieux Carré (another New Orleans stirred cocktail of similar era and complexity) and the pre-Prohibition tradition of New Orleans cocktailing that made the city the most sophisticated bar culture in America through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Bénédictine, produced at the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy since 1863 from a formula of 27 herbs and spices, provides warm, herbal sweetness that complements rye whiskey's spice in a way that plain sugar cannot match. Peychaud's Bitters, produced in New Orleans by apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud from the 1830s onward, supplies the distinctly floral, anise-adjacent bitterness that defines New Orleans' classic stirred cocktails.