This one's mine before it's anybody's, learned in my grandfather Edouard's kitchen at eleven years old, under supervision. It started as a cognac drink, built around Sazerac de Forge et Fils, and went to rye in the 1870s when phylloxera wiped out the French vineyards and there wasn't cognac to be had. Either spirit is defensible today, you just say which one you used. Peychaud's bitters trace back to a French Quarter apothecary in the 1830s. Absinthe was banned nationally in 1912, which is why Herbsaint, made right here starting in 1934, ended up in most versions poured since; absinthe's been legal again since 2007, so either is correct as long as you name it on the spec. I'll clear up the pretty story while I'm at it: the word cocktail did not come from Peychaud serving brandy in a coquetier, a Creole egg cup. It's in print in a Hudson, New York newspaper in 1806, defined the same way we'd define it today, before Peychaud was pouring anything for anybody. New Orleans didn't invent the word. We built the repertoire, and that's the bigger claim anyway. One more thing I hold a hard line on: the lemon peel gets expressed and thrown away. The oil is the aromatic. A peel sitting in the glass is a garnish somebody added later, and it's not mine.
How it's made
1Chill the glass, build the stir
The serving glass has to be properly cold before the rinse ever touches it, an absinthe rinse in a warm glass smells hot and boozy instead of aromatic. Everything gets stirred, never shaken, this is an all-spirit drink and shaking it would just bruise it and cloud it for nothing.
- Fill one rocks glass with ice and water, set it aside to chill while you build the drink.
- In a mixing glass with ice, combine 2 oz (60 ml) rye, 1/4 oz (7 ml) simple syrup, and 3 dashes Peychaud's bitters.
- Stir 20 to 25 seconds. You're chilling it and pulling roughly an ounce of water into the drink, that water is not a mistake, take it out and you've got a mouthful of raw rye and regret.
2Rinse, strain, express, discard
The rinse coats the glass so every sip carries a whisper of anise across the nose without the absinthe ever becoming an ingredient you can taste on its own. The peel's oil is the last aromatic layer, and once it's landed on the surface its job is done.
- Dump the ice water out of the chilled rocks glass. Add a scant 1/4 oz (7 ml) Herbsaint or absinthe, swirl to coat the entire inside, then tip out the excess.
- Strain the stirred rye into the rinsed glass. No ice goes in the serving glass.
- Cut a wide swath of lemon peel. Hold it skin-side down over the drink and give it a firm snap to express the oil across the surface, then set the peel aside and do not drop it in the glass.
Notes
No pineapple, kiwi, tomato, or capsaicin anywhere in this build, cleared clean. This is a full-proof cocktail, not a candidate for substitution.
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