La Louisiane

Taste

On the nose it's absinthe and anise straight away, with the Peychaud's pushing in the same direction and the rye sitting underneath the pair of them. On tasting the Bénédictine is far more forward than it is in a Vieux Carré, honeyed and herbal and taking up a lot of room, and the rye has to work to get past it. It comes out sweeter than the ingredient list suggests and the absinthe is the only thing stopping it going further. Three cherries is the traditional garnish and they aren't just decoration, you'll want something to eat at the end of this.

Origin

La Louisiane, or A La Louisiane, was the house cocktail of Restaurant de la Louisiane on Iberville Street, one of the grand old Creole dining rooms of New Orleans. Like the Vieux Carré it reaches us through Stanley Clisby Arthur's Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em in 1937, given there as the restaurant's own. Worth knowing what Arthur is and isn't. His is the same book that gave the world Antoine Peychaud serving brandy in an egg cup, a coquetier, and thereby inventing the word cocktail, a story that has since been fairly thoroughly taken apart. So Arthur is an excellent record of what was actually being poured in 1937 New Orleans and a much shakier one on where any of it came from. For this drink that distinction doesn't hurt, because he was writing about a restaurant that was still open and still serving it. No inventor is named. The restaurant gets the credit and the record stops there.