NEW ORLEANS -- We're here for a couple of days of the fourth Tales of the Cocktail conference -- an exploration of the history and craft of mixology -- held in the historic Hotel Monteleone, where Truman Capote was almost born, where William Faulkner received the French Legion of Honor, and whose famous Carousel Bar is prominently featured in the works of Eudora Welty, Ernest Hemingway and Richard Ford.
   I might add that the Carousel Bar has played a not insignificant part in my personal history, but reminiscence seems beside the point in this yet to be reborn city. There's more cautious optimism in the air than nostalgia; New Orleans has always had its sad and indolent side, but the times call for forward spin. The gentleman who drove us from the airport says he's not putting up new sheetrock in his halfway rebuilt home until the fall -- until then he'll continue commuting from his temporary digs in Clinton, Miss., 180 miles away. If the hurricane season passes without incident, then he'll come home. Lots of people have decided to wait and see.
   Like many of the estimated 4,000 people attending the conference, Phil Greene is a New Orleans expatriate, a federal lawyer who lives in Washington. He's also an amateur historian and board member of the Museum of the American Cocktail, an institution that had its permanent collection displaced by Hurricane Katrina (the collection's now split between Las Vegas, New York and the second floor of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum on Chartres Street).
   Greene is a descendant of Antoine Amedee Peychaud, a 19th-century New Orleans pharmacist who concocted the still-extant Peychaud's Aromatic Cocktail Bitters and is sometimes credited with coining the word "cocktail." According to legend, Peychaud provided -- for medicinal purposes -- a mixture of brandy and his bitters served in double-ended hourglass eggcups known as "coquetiers." To English speakers this sounded like "cock tay." This in turn was corrupted to "cocktail."
   Nice story, Greene allows; too bad it simply isn't so. While he allows for the chance that the word could have been independently coined in New Orleans in the 1830s, he can cite an 1806 reference to the word in an upstate New York newspaper called The Balance and Columbian Repository. In response to a letter from a reader asking for a definition of the term, the editor wrote:
   Cock tail... is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters it... is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time it fuddles the head. It is also said to be of great use to a democratic candidate : Because a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.
   Since A.A. Peychaud was 3 years old when that letter appeared, Greene concedes that his ancestor was probably not the father of the cocktail. He was, however, the father of the Sazerac, if only because his trademark bitters -- distinct from the ubiquitous Angostura bitters -- are a necessary component of the drink. Greene, who contributed an article about Peychaud and the Sazerac to the inaugural volume of Mixologist: The Journal of the American Cocktail, says Peychaud invented the Sazerac in his Royal Street pharmacy and that it was perfected in the Sazerac Coffeehouse, Sewell Taylor's Exchange Alley bar, in the 1870s.
   (The bar moved to the Roosevelt Hotel in 1949, where the Sazerac Bar and Restaurant still stands. The Roosevelt became the Fairmont in 1965, and the hotel pays an annual fee to the Sazerac Company -- the makers of Peychaud's Bitters, Sazerac Rye, Buffalo Trace Bourbon and several other products -- for the use of the name.)
   Taylor happened to be the sole U.S. importer of Sazeracde-Forge et fils Cognac, and he declared the drink -- which soon began to be called after the name of the bar -- should be made only with Sazerac brand cognac. One of the dozen bartenders he had working refined the drink further by adding a few drops of absinthe to coat the glass.
   In time, rye whiskey or -- in the Commander's Palace version, at least -- bourbon replaced the cognac. Bourbon is frowned upon by purists not because it ruins the drink -- a bourbon Sazerac can be quite pleasant -- but because it changes the essential character of it. Rye (most New Orleans bars use 4-yearold Old Overholt, an 86-proof variety with some spice) has a distinct, crisp taste with honey overtones. Substituting bourbon makes it a different drink.
   And absinthe has been officially banned in the U.S. since 1912. So any anise-flavored pastis -- Pernod, Richard or the New Orleans favorite Herbsaint -- will do in a pinch.
   (It's still possible to acquire authentic absinthe. Ted Breaux, another New Orleans expatriate who produces absinthe in France, says he's had "100 percent success" shipping his products to customers in the United States.)
   A proper Sazerac is a complex and warming drink that reveals layers of spice, licorice and lemon floating above the distinctive rye burn as you sip it. It is related to the Old Fashioned, without the cherry sweetness some find cloying.
   Greene is probably the world's leading authority on the Sazerac. So while you can get versions of the drink at almost any reputable bar, like the one at Little Rock's Cajun's Wharf (2400 Cantrell Road, 501-375-5351 ), his is the definitive version. Here it is, from The Museum of the American Cocktail's Pocket Recipe Guide:

SAZERAC
1 sugar cube (or 1 teaspoon bar sugar) 1 teaspoon water 2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters 3 oz. rye whiskey 1 teaspoon absinthe (or absinthe substitute) Fill a small rocks glass with ice and allow it to chill. Empty the ice into a second small rocks glass. In the first glass, add the sugar, water and bitters. Using a small muddler or spoon, crush the sugar cube until it dissolves in the water and bitters. Add rye and stir.
   Pour the contents of the first glass into the ice-filled second glass. Pour the absinthe (or absinthe substitute) into the first glass, and twirl the glass to coat it well. Discard any remaining absinthe. Strain the contents of second glass into the absinthecoated first glass. Garnish with a lemon peel that is first twisted over the top of the glass. Spirits is a monthly imbibing guide. Email :
   

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

This story was published Friday, August 04, 2006