Iconic New Orleans Cocktails – serie

In this fascinating little book, John DeMers tells the story of the Vieux Carré cocktail against the evolving backdrop of the ever-rich cocktail culture of New Orleans. Mixologist Walter Bergeron created this distinctive drink in the 1930s at the Hotel Monteleone; it was later dubbed "the Cocktail that Spins" in honor of the slowly turning Carousel Bar at the hotel. It's an iconic cocktail that, in recent years, was rarely ordered or prepared, though that is changing as a new generation of cocktail enthusiasts rediscover the old ways.The Vieux Carré draws on the local proto-cocktail, the Sazerac, as well as several booze-forward classics including the Manhattan, the Old Fashioned, and, from Italy, the Negroni. DeMers tells all that is known of Walter Bergeron's early life and also examines the ingredients in this cocktail and how each of them made its way to the Crescent City.

The Absinthe Frappé examines the history of absinthe, its origins, and its influences, culminating in the story of the iconic New Orleans cocktail. Marielle Songy reveals how bartender Cayetano Ferrér invented the concoction and delves into the early days of the drink and its first home, the Old Absinthe House in the Crescent City. She explores the ban on absinthe in the United States and Europe and the misguided reasoning behind it, all in the context of New Orleans's response to national Prohibition more broadly. Finally, Songy discusses the lifting of the restrictions on absinthe in 2007, a move largely spearheaded by New Orleans scientist and master distiller Theodore Breaux, who dispelled long-held notions that the Green Fairy invariably drove its connoisseurs to madness.

In The French 75, John Maxwell Hamilton tracks down the many lives of this protean cocktail. The drink, named by French propagandists during World War I, was said to pack a punch as powerful as that nation's celebrated 75 mm cannon. At the end of the century, the French 75 surfaced at Arnaud's Restaurant and became as entrenched in New Orleans as the famed second line. Hamilton explores the kaleidoscopic variety of the French 75 over the years and across continents.

Almost lost to history, the Roffignac has long been one of New Orleans's most mysterious cocktails. While drinks such as the Sazerac and the Ramos gin fizz enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during the craft cocktail movement of the early twenty-first century, resurrecting the Roffignac has proved a more difficult task.Named for nineteenth-century New Orleans mayor Joseph Roffignac, the whiskey-based drink became one of the city's most celebrated libations by the 1890s. After Prohibition, however, its place in Crescent City drinking culture never quite recovered. It remained the house cocktail at Maylie's Restaurant until its owners shuttered the establishment in 1983. By then, the Roffignac had fallen into relative obscurity.The renewed interest in craft spirits in the 2010s saw bartenders and spirits enthusiasts across the country creating their own versions of the Roffignac. Many tried to trace its roots back through the years and uncover early recipes for the drink, and some perpetuated fanciful accounts related to its name, origins, and original ingredients.Robert F. Moss separates truth from fiction and offers the definitive story of this classic pre-Prohibition creation. The Roffignac explains for the first time how this once-famous elixir fell out of favor before being rediscovered by mixologists and connoisseurs. It also surveys dining and drinking in nineteenth-century New Orleans and explores how twentieth- and twenty-first-century conceptions of the city have shaped our views of the drink and its history. As Moss shares this remarkable and rather twisted tale, he highlights the central role that narrative, myth, and legend have played in American cocktail culture, and how unreliable those stories can sometimes be.

The Ramos Gin Fizz was invented sometime around 1890 by Henry Charles "Carl" Ramos at his Imperial Cabinet saloon in New Orleans. It includes lemon and lime juice, egg white, cream, and orange flower water, and, shaken properly, it becomes a foamy white concoction that has been called "the nectar of New Orleans," "the Cadillac of Cocktails," and "the Crescent City's most notable contribution to civilized tippling." This book offers a history of the drink and a biography of its inventor, starting with the early years in which the Ramos Gin Fizz became nationally famous as a New Orleans icon. Although Prohibition almost put an end to it in New Orleans, it survived elsewhere—for instance, at the Cadillac Bar in Nuevo Laredo—and after Prohibition's repeal, the drink quickly recovered and was once again a New Orleans favorite. In the 1940s and '50s, it became known as a sophisticated and glamorous drink, popular with celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Tennessee Williams. Like many classic American cocktails, the Ramos Gin Fizz was eclipsed by fruity disco drinks in the 1970s and '80s (although it had a strange shadow life as a California brunch drink). With the cocktail revival at the turn of the century, however, it was again recognized as an American classic. The Ramos Gin Fizz attempts to reconstruct Ramos's original recipe using modern ingredients and addresses the question of how and how much to shake the drink, a subject on which there is surprisingly much to be said. Offering recipes for the original drink, a modern version, and many imaginative riffs, this eminently readable book is a must-have for any cocktail lover's library.