Sazerac

Rye, Peychaud's bitters, and absinthe — 1850s New Orleans formula, cognac replaced by rye after phylloxera, absinthe replaced by Herbsaint after 1912.

The Sazerac is recognized as one of the oldest continuously made American cocktails, with a documented lineage in New Orleans beginning in the 1850s. The drink was originally made at the Sazerac Coffee House on Exchange Alley (now Exchange Place) in the French Quarter, where proprietor Sewell Taylor and later John Schiller served a preparation built around Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils cognac — a specific Cognac house whose product gave the bar and eventually the drink its name — combined with Peychaud's Bitters, created by Haitian-born apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud who had settled in New Orleans and was producing his proprietary bitters from the 1830s onward. The catastrophic phylloxera epidemic that swept through French vineyards from the 1870s onward devastated Cognac production so severely that the drink's cognac base became unavailable at reliable quality and price, leading to the substitution of American rye whiskey — which produced a spicier, more assertive result that New Orleans drinkers embraced as the definitive version. The absinthe rinse, which coats the serving glass before the drink is added, was a fixture of the preparation before absinthe's American prohibition in 1912, after which Herbsaint — a locally produced New Orleans anise liqueur — became the standard substitute. The City of New Orleans officially designated the Sazerac its municipal cocktail by act of the Louisiana state legislature in 2008.