New Orleans and the Legal, Mixological, and Etymological History of the Cocktail

A trademark case before the Louisiana Supreme Court in the late nineteenth century involved a New Orleans company that manufactured bitters and is, tangentially, related to several of the city’s contributions to the history of alcoholic beverages. Bitters are mixtures of alcohol infused with herbs or other ingredients that are now key components in many mixed drinks but which were originally consumed as health tonics. A dose of bitters was once considered a bracing elixir that helped to stimulate vitality, and so as preventative medicine it was completely different than just slugging back a few shots of whiskey. Bitters, aperitifs, and digestives - all similar products - were also conveniently not categorized as liquor for tax purposes.

In the case of Handy v. Commander, 22 So. 230 (La. 1897), plaintiff Thomas H. Handy & Co. of New Orleans was the maker of “Handy’s Aromatic Cocktail Bitters.” Handy’s Bitters were represented to be “the most palatable and flavorous ever” and were guaranteed to “stimulate the appetite and invigorate the functions of the stomach, thereby preventing dyspepsia.” Defendant Anthony Commander was an employee of Handy’s who, after learning the recipe for Handy’s Bitters, quit and set up his own company to sell the same formulation under the name “Commander’s Aromatic Cocktail Bitters.” At issue in Handy v. Commander was the trademark that Handy held for the labeling of his bitters and Commander’s unauthorized use of a nearly-identical trademark. (The formula of the bitters itself was not patented or protected as a trade secret.) The court noted that “in size, in style and color, in lettering and execution, word for word, there is not a point of difference between the trademark of Handy and the trademark put forth by the defendant, except that the latter is styled ‘Commander’s Bitters’ while the former was styled ‘Handy’s Bitters’”. Because of the similar and confusing labels, the court upheld the judgment of trademark infringement and the $450 damage award, which was based on the 88% decline in sales that Handy suffered from Commander’s illegally competing product.

The bitters central to the dispute in Handy v. Commander were from a recipe developed and finessed decades earlier by a New Orleans pharmacist named Antoine Amadée Peychaud, a French Creole immigrant from Haiti. Peychaud had worked on many different types of recipes for bitters and other herbal medicinal aids since arriving in New Orleans in 1793. (His eponymous brand, Peychaud’s Bitters, is still manufactured in New Orleans.) In the scholarship of alcohol, the addition of bitters to mixtures of liquor and water or other mixers is seen as both a historic turning point as well as a categorical delineation between cocktails and, in what at one time was a strict distinction, other mixed drinks such as toddies and slings.

In the late 1830s, Peychaud created a pleasing combination of his bitters mixed with brandy and absinthe, and the recipe for this drink spread beyond his friends and customers and became popular throughout the city. One establishment decided to make it only with a particular type of brandy, which also soon became the concoction’s name, the Sazerac. Now a signature New Orleans drink, the Sazerac is widely acknowledged to be one of the first true cocktails, if not the first. (Modern Sazeracs use Herbsaint or Pernod in place of the absinthe; thank you very much, F.D.A.)

But what about that word, cocktail? No definitive derivation of the term has been established, and some of the more colorful stories are considered apocryphal, such as the one about the revolutionary war-era barmaid who decorated the mixed drinks she served with a rooster’s tailfeather. History often shows that the more mundane explanation for something is most often correct, and that is likely the case here. Besides creating the first cocktail, Peychaud also deserves some credit in this matter. He served his early mixed drinks in a double ended egg cup, called a coquetier and pronounced kah-kuh-TYAY; to the non-French speaking residents of New Orleans, the word was mis-heard, mis-understood, and/or mis-pronounced as “cocktail.” This is less colorful and not really that much more likely than other claimed derivations, but one writer on the subject noted that the esteemed lexicographer Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly (go ahead, Google him) has declared that the coquetier origin story is “the oldest and most positive basis for the word cocktail.”

So now that you’ve learned more about New Orleans and the cocktail than you ever wanted to know, if you’re coming to the 2007 AALL Annual Meeting here are some of the best places in the Crescent City to have a cocktail, a beer, or a glass of wine.

Napoleon House
500 Chartres Street
The perfect place to have a refreshing Pimm’s Cup after walking around the Quarter on a hot summer day. The café menu has an excellent cheese plate and their muffaletta - a classic New Orleans sandwich of salami, ham, and Provolone topped with olive salad - is one of the best in the city.

Pirate’s Alley Café
622 Pirate's Alley
Located near Jackson Square adjacent to the St. Louis Cathedral and behind the Cabildo. When you sit on a sidewalk table at this hole in the wall bar and café, you can get a sense of what the quarter was like back in the nineteenth century. They sometimes have live music on the unbelievably tiny stage next to - and smaller than - the rest room.

Peristyle
1041 Dumaine Street
A little too far to walk to, but this is one of the city’s best restaurants, so if you make a reservation for dinner and take a cab, get there early and sit at their gorgeous and very well-stocked bar for a pre-dinner drink or two. The two large murals of New Orleans’ City Park are the inspiration for the restaurant’s name.

Carousel Bar
214 Royal Street
Just off the lobby of the Monteleone Hotel is the Carousel Bar, the centerpiece of which is the circular main bar decorated like a carousel and which revolves in a full circle every fifteen minutes. The Monteleone is one of only three hotels in the country to be designated as a literary landmark, and the Carousel was a New Orleans favorite for writers such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Truman Capote.

Johnny White’s Sports Bar
720 Bourbon Street
Many bars in New Orleans are open twenty-four hours a day, but this tiny establishment is worth a stop, if for no other reason than to be able to say you’ve had a drink at the only place in New Orleans that didn’t even close for Katrina. They managed to stay open during the hurricane itself, the subsequent chaos, the extended power outage, and the subsequent weeks of evacuation and curfew and even somehow found a supply of ice to keep the beer cold (those National Guardsmen and state troopers can be very helpful in a scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours sort of way). Of course, they sell t-shirts and other memorabilia to commemorate that accomplishment.

Molly’s at the Market
1107 Decatur Street
The best Irish pub in the Quarter. The decorative wooden urn behind the bar contains the ashes of the bar’s late owner and founder.

Pat O’Brien’s
718 St. Peter Street
Famous since the 1940s for one of New Orleans’ signature drinks, The Hurricane, which is just rum added to an overly sweet fruit juice mix that tastes like Hawaiian Punch (which may help explain why Pat O’s is the #1 bar in the world for customers who only order one drink, though for various reasons). It’s definitely a great looking place, with a huge courtyard and four separate bars, so if you order something besides the Hurricane it can be worth a visit.

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop
941 Bourbon Street
Occupying one of the oldest buildings in the city, dating back at least to 1772 and featuring very little in the decor that seems to have been updated since then, Lafitte’s is always included on lists of must-visit bars in the French Quarter, and is one of the few that is definitely deserving of that suggestion.

Originally published in the AALL Spring 2007 ALL-SIS Newsletter (and elsehwere...eventually).