How to Make a Sazerac, the Rye and Absinthe Riff on an Old Fashioned

If someone comes to my bar and orders a Sazerac, I mean, if they come to my bar and order old-fashioned, everybody knows the old-fashioned, everybody's seen Mad Men, but if they come to my bar and order a Sazerac, you tend to think that that person kind of has some cocktail cred, that they know what they're doing. New Orleans has an unusual amount of cocktails that it claims as its own. There's like the French 75 and the Vucaray and the Ramos Gin Fizz and the Hurricane, but probably the king of all of them would be the Sazerac, the original cocktail. Sazerac is essentially an old-fashioned, so it's essentially a cocktail by the original definition, sugar, spirit, water, and bitters. We subbed ice for water when we, you know, commercially had ice available. It uses a particular type of bitters from New Orleans called Peychaud's and rye whiskey. It differs from the original definition of cocktail in that it has absinthe, which is also a very New Orleans flavor. So we start with a mixing glass and Peychaud's bitters. Peychaud's is from New Orleans, it's homegrown. Antoine Peychaud was a, he was an apothecary. He started making his own bitters. So bitters are just alcohol into which is infused a bitter root of some kind, gentian, wormwood, whatever it is. In this particular case, it's gentian. And so Peychaud's is traditional. In the Sazerac, we do a heavy four to six dashes. A lot of people add Angostura as well. This is not incorrect. I personally think it doesn't add as much as it distracts. So I like to just do it pure Peychaud's bitters. Next for just a touch of sweetness, we have Demerara syrup. You can use simple syrup, it'd be fine. Demerara is less refined sugar. So it is quarter ounce, just a touch of Demerara syrup. We've got the sugar, we've got the bitters, no need in spirit. And for this, I like rye whiskey. In fact, everybody likes rye whiskey. We used to make the Sazerac with cognac. At least we think we did. The history is a little murky there. The word Sazerac actually comes from a brand of cognac called Sazerac du Forge et Fille. I'm not even gonna attempt to pronounce that right. I wouldn't please people who would care about that anyway. So between the 1850s and the 1870s, there's this aphid, this little bug called Phylloxera, this little yellow bug that liked to munch in particular on the rootstock of French vines. And it obliterated the cognac and wine industry in France, just completely obliterated it. Between 50 and 70% of all of it is just gone in a decade and they couldn't figure it out. The supply of cognac dried up. Rye whiskey was more than happy to fill in the vacuum. And so everybody started using rye. Now, it's less important to me what was original. What I focused on is what tastes best. And I think rye whiskey tastes best, in particular, Kentucky-style rye. So a rye that has a decent proportion of corn. I like Rittenhouse rye for this. This is bottled and boned, so it's 100 proof. And no matter what rye you use, we need two ounces of it. So two ounces of rye whiskey. Now it's ready to mix. So because this is all booze, we're going to stir it as opposed to shake it to keep the silky texture and not kind of over dilute it. And if you don't have an ice cold rock glass, just throw some ice in a glass, chill it down a little bit. And then we add ice and we stir. Now, how long you stir for is going to kind of depend on the quality of the ice, like what kind of ice you have. If you've got small ice like this, you don't have to stir for that long, 10 to 15 seconds or so. If you had big ice, you'd have to stir longer. The whole point of big ice is that it dilutes less quickly. Right, once the glass is good and cold, Sazerac comes without ice. And this is where the absinthe comes in. Now, you can add absinthe to the actual drink if you want to. I like to rinse the glass with it. Now, you can rinse the glass a bunch of different ways. You can just take some absinthe and pour it in and then just kind of turn the glass as you empty it. Or if you have a fancy atomizer like this. The nice thing about coating the glass with absinthe as opposed to putting it all in the drink is that all the inside is rinsed. So when you pull it up to your nose, the first thing you get is just this big hit of absinthe on the nose right as you take a drink. Grab a strainer. Another thing that makes a Sazerac different from the old fashion is that it is served down, which is to say without ice in a rocks glass. Now, for a garnish, we do a lemon peel. What's very traditional is to express the lemon peel over the top and then discard it. So you're just serving it clean like this. I used to put the lemon peel in because I thought it looked nicer. But the more I make these, the more I kind of like the minimalism of it without any of the peel. So take the peel between our fingers, spray it on top like so. Give the rim a little kiss of lemon oil. And this is a Sazerac. Yeah, see, the absinthe is what really, I don't even love anise as a flavor, but the absinthe is what really pulls this thing together. It's what makes it awesome. It's strong with rye whiskey. The Canadian style rye, something softer like bullet rye or Templeton or one of those is like, it's still going to be good. I mean, all rye whiskey is going to be good here. Personally, I like the Kentucky style rye and I like slightly higher proof because I like it to come out swinging a little bit. I mean, this is a Sazerac. You're supposed to feel it. This isn't a cotton candy mojito. This is why everybody loves this cocktail.